I left her to it, closing the door quietly behind me. I don’t know what made me linger there on the landing. I expected to hear her slicing open the envelope but instead what I heard was a key turning in a lock and a drawer sliding open and shut, then there was a faint “clink‘ I couldn’t place and finally once again silence, so that I had to walk away on the very tips of my toes, and grab onto the wall for balance.
An hour later when I called her downstairs to eat I seen straight away that she had been crying. Her nose was red and her eyes was all swoll up and watery. Bless her she was putting a brave face on it, whatever it was, and I didn’t want to pry so I kept my mouth shut until after we had ate. And then I says, very gentle, “Forgive me asking marm but—did you have bad news?”
All at once, her eyes welled up. I’m afraid my imagination ran riot and I jumped to the worst and most Romantic conclusion.
“Whatever’s the matter, marm?” I says, “Is it blackmail?”
That kind of thing was always happening in The Peoples Journal.
The missus looked at me askance. “Don’t be silly,” she says. And then she stood up. “It’s nothing. I’m fine. Now, it’s time you got on with your work.”
And with those words she marched out the room. At the time I thought it was something in her letter had upset her but looking back on it now, I’m not so sure.
By the evening, missus seemed to have recovered her composure. After I had cleared the table she tellt me to make Fridays entry in my book and then asked to see it straight away. I stood there very anxious while she read it over but she smiled when she finished and said it was a
great
improvement. Most of all she seemed to like the part about my mother and her good works which for dear sake was the bit I had invented! on account of I had forgot to remember what I was thinking about whilst I was working so I just made up the first thing that came into my head.
“This part about your mother,” says missus. “Write more like this.”
“I’ll do that marm,” I says, thinking well for dear sake if she can’t tell the difference that’s easy enough, I’ll just make things up all the time.
Then she went and fetched a piece of paper she had wrote on herself. She laid it on the table beside my open book and said, “Now Bessy, you spell very well but let’s just have a look at these.” So the two of us stood there looking down at her writing and mine. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be looking for, but I looked all the same. Her piece of paper was the first page of a letter she’d wrote to her father in the village of Wimbledon England. Hoo-rah! I thought to myself, secretly delighted to have the opportunity to read something private of hers but the first paragraph was only about the weather and then she started in about some book she had been reading dear gob it looked a very dull letter indeed with nothing very revealing at all but perhaps that was why she had chose it.
After a minute she turned to me and smiled.
“You see?” she says.
I thought about lying but I had a feeling that it wouldn’t have done me much good. So I said no, I didn’t see. Missus kept smiling.
She says, “What is the difference between this piece of writing and that one?”
I says, “This one is a letter to your father and that one is my book you give me.” A stupid answer I know but I was flustered and perhaps a bit cross for I hated to be put on the spot and made to look daft.
Any other difference?“ says the missus, still smiling.
I looked again. She leaned in and says quietly, “Look at the spaces between the words.”
It was a clue. Well I looked hard at her “Dear Father‘. There was a space between the two words right enough. Then I looked at my ”got up . There was a space there too. But the two spaces seemed much the same to me and one space plus another space is just a bigger space no matter how long you look at it.
The missus sighed and pointed at her page putting her finger next all the full stops. Then she pointed at mine. Not a full stop in sight. Then she showed me all the commas in her letter. And then she put her finger in my book. Not even a sniff of a comma there.
“I am very pleased that you are writing at greater length, Bessy,” she says. “But do you see how what you have written is all one sentence from the top of the page to the bottom. You write as you speak without pausing for breath. Have you never heard of punctuation?”
Well I tellt her I knew all about punctuation it was just I was never sure where the flip I was supposed to put it.
That was when the missus decided she would be responsible for my education. She got quite excited about the notion, she sat me down and tellt me that when she was young she had it in mind to tread the streets of London town to gather up all the little ragamuffins who couldn’t read and write and take them home to Wimbledon to teach them their ABC. I don’t suppose her father would have been pleased about that, dirty wee beggars sitting on his chairs and mucking up his Turkey carpets but as it happened the furnishings was saved.
“In the end, Bessy,” she tells me. “I didn’t do it.”
She was smiling still but she wore a little frown and there was no mistaking the sadness that had crept in behind her eyes, she had fell once again into Melancholia.
“Why was that, marm?” I says very quiet. “What happened?”
Now I was only chancing my arm, thinking she would more than likely change the subject or walk out like she’d done earlier. So you could have knocked me down with a feather when she leaned towards me, took my hand in hers and looked me deep in the eyes.
“Not many people know this, Bessy,” she says very earnest. “Can I rely on you not to tell a soul?”
Well flip me I could have cheered. To be took into her confidence! But instead I pursed my lips put my head on one side and made my face very reliable. You could not have found a more reliable person in the whole of Scratchland. I was reliability itself.
“Indeed you can, marm,” I says. “I would take it to my grave whatever it is.”
She nodded. “Yes,” she says. “I believe you would.” And then she told me her story.
Of course I didn’t write it down because it was tellt to me in confidence. And although as far as I knew she and I were the only ones to look in my book I was very aware of what might happen if it fell into the
wrong hands.
The missus wouldn’t want her private business bandied about by the likes of Biscuit Meek or AP Henderson, the scuts, and neither would I, that was why I was always very careful what I wrote in there.
However.
Several years have passed since. I have thought long and hard about it and decided to write a brief version of what she told me here since it may be of use and I have been assured that this document is only for the PRIVATE perusal of one or two gentlemen.
This is what the missus said. Sure she herself hadn’t known the first thing about cows either when she originally came to Scratchland, a young girl only a few years older than I was then, all the way up from London with her new husband, that is my master James as was. He had went down to that Great English City to spend a few weeks seeing the lions and attending concert parties, Promenades, Conversaziones and the like. Reading between the lines (not the lions) he was there to find a wife. And find one he did, in the delectable form of missus age 19. He tellt her he had trained in the law but that he did not practise any more what he done instead was dabble in a number of business interests he had inherited. After a few weeks courting he went down on his one knee in Wimbledon. “Castle Haivers is yours, my dearie,” he’d said and that’s what he tellt her father too though I don’t expect he called him dearie and off they set after the wedding the new bride next her wealthy husband, her cheeks flushed and attar of roses in her hair, ready to greet the staff at her grand new home.
What master James neglected to mention, of course, was that Castle Haivers was just the name of the estate. Right enough, he had a queer few hundred acres and some tenant farmer buckos and he did not otherwise lack in wealth and business interests, but there was not a castle in sight only dirt land none of it too pretty and a crumbling old mansion and the Mains. Missus tellt me that on her first night in Castle Haivers she cried until she couldn’t see out her eyes.
At that the both of us had a little weep thegether about her misfortune. Then she wiped her cheeks and wiped mine. I asked her why she hadn’t ran away and she said Oh she had, the very day after they arrived. While master James was out talking to his foreman, she packed a little bag, ran down the road, got a ride on a cart, then jumped on the first train to London and threw herself on her fathers mercy back in Wimbledon which thinking about it now was a very brave thing for her to do.
“What happened?” I asked her.
She says everything was grand at first, her father said “there there‘ and of course she didn’t have to go back. But then he asked her about the nuptials.
“What about them, missus?” I says.
“Whether they had taken place,” she says and looked crestfallen. From which I gathered that they had and that she’d been daft enough to tell her father as much. Well my missus was back on the road north before her feet could touch the ground with her ears still ringing and her poor wee titties didn’t stop bouncing till she was right back at Castle Haivers, missus didn’t say that last bit, I did.
“And so you see I never did get to help the little ragamuffins,” she says.
“Och dear,” I says. “Sure that’s a terrible shame.”
My heart went out to her. In the back of my mind I was also thinking to myself that there’s beggar children all over the place not just London and she could always have helped the ones in Glasgow or even them that passed through Snatter but I didn’t want to spoil the moment when we was so cosy and she was telling me her secrets and all. By Jove I could have sat there holding her hand all night, it was lovely, more like being mother and daughter or very best friends than mistress and maid. A thought occurred to me now that we was so friendly, about that burnt accompt book I’d seen the day I arrived.
“Marm,” I says. “Who is Morag?”
Well you would have thought I’d slapped her in the face. She pulled her hand away.
“What?” she says very suspicious. “Who have you been talking to?” “No-one, marm.”
“But where did you hear that name? Nora? Where did you hear it?” “No marm, it was Morag,” I says. “Morag. Not Nora.”
“Oh:
At the time, I did not pay much heed to her mistake. It was only later I realised its significance. She seemed to relax a little but then she looked at me, through narrowed eyes.
“In that case where did you hear the name Morag?”
“I don’t know,” I says, regretting ever having mentioned it. “I—I think I might have seen it wrote down.”
She surged to her feet, her fists clenched. “Written down where?”
“On a—on a piece of paper marm.”
“Where?” she says glancing at the ceiling as if it might be pasted up there. “Where is this piece of paper?”
“I don’t know marm—I—it was in my room—I—I threw it away.”
“What did it say?”
“Just—just the name, marm. Morag. Only that. I—I promise you.”
She held the lamp aloft and started peering about the place, frowning and making exasperated noises.
“I thought you said you cleaned this floor,” she says to me but when I jumped up to do it she says, “Oh do it in the morning will you. But look here—the fire is nearly out.”
“I’ll see to it marm,” I says.
“But don’t take too long.”
By the time I had a good blaze going she was back at the table, studying my book. I went over and stood not too close and give her a little curtsey. She nodded without looking at me. Best friends no longer, we was mistress and maid once more.
Sit down, Bessy,“ she says. ”We have work to do. I think we should devote a part of every evening after supper to the improvement of your efforts.“
And then she took up a pen and dipped it in ink. “Clink” went the pen against the ink jar and I realised that it was the same sound that I’d heard earlier that day, and then the missus began to teach me punctuation.
To tell the gobs honest truth I did not give a first-light fart for full stops and all the rest. I thought my page looked fine while her page looked like it was covered in goat droppings with all the wee dots and spots on it. But as my Mr. Levy used to say, choices choices, life is full of choices. I thought to myself would you rather be up in your room where there is no fire and a draft coming through the window or would you rather be down here warming your titties by the coals and watching the lovely Arabella as she gives you a lecture on commas and capital letters and maybe from time to time holds your hand and takes you into her confidence?
I studied a lot of punctuation.
5
The Master Returns
Wednesday
Last night went to sleep with my fingers pressed into my cheeks to try and make dimples like the pretty ones missus has but sadly no luck there my cheeks are just the same and now I have one sore finger where I slept on it. Today we ran out of tea . missus loves a nice cup of tea so I went to buy more . it started raining on the way to Snatter , I was not pleased . I was looking about me smiling to see if I could see any of the folk that live there in the village but hardly a soul because of the heavy rain . I was disappointed . The man that runs the shop his name is Henderson, Mr. Henderson to me, he tried to sell the tea
1/2
an oz short but when I pointed it out he pretended it was a mistake and give me a dark look . I asked him if he liked working in a shop but he told me he didn’t work in it he owned it, there is a big difference he says , so I telit him I used to work for Mr. Levy of Glasgow , a very successful businessman who owned several shops selling furs , very wealthy he was with shops coming out his ears and such a nice pleasant man too , his success had not spoiled him one jot but of course he never stood behind the counter he had people done that for him . Henderson just looked at me . Then he said something about a bog . I just looked at him back . I think he is not too keen on an Irish girl . Missus says there was nearly a big fight a few years ago when a bunch of Irish fellows coming back from the harvest were menaced by some villagers, in the end nobody was hurt but hereabouts they don’t like the Irish much. On the way up the road the rain stopped . A big country fellow with curly hair his trousers held up with a bit of rope and a short black pipe in his mouth came louping out a cottage and fell into step beside me . he had a big dusty face and he kept counting things on his fingers . You name it he counted it, hens , chimney pots , window panes , steps , washing on a line , legs on a horse , spokes on a cartwheel , fence posts , the stripes on my apron . always very serious , like his counting was the most important task in the world . I asked him some things like , what are you doing? But he just ignored me and carried on counting , clearly he is a lunatic . when I got home missus tellt me it was probably Sammy Sums that has been wrong in the mind since he was a boy . he scared me at first but missus says there is no harm in him so that put my mind at rest. people call him Sammy Sums because of the counting , he counts everything . Missus tellt me his busiest time is summer on account of the midgies , they are his lifes work. She did make me laugh . I tellt missus I would take up her offer of a patch of garden to grow things after all, I do not know what yet. I think flowers would be nice roses or sweet pea and then I could give a bunch to missus but she said I would be better planting cabbage and beans . I was all set to start throwing things in the ground straight away but she tellt me the soil has to be prepared , nothing is easy in the country . I made a start anyway in my hour off and tore a whole clatter of stones out the earth and then cleaned missus boots and my own and done some other chores nothing strange or startling . I have finished Bleak House and liked it so she give me another to read, it is about a boy called Pip . Tonight I read aloud to her first out the bible then out an old Monthly Visitor a story about two French cottagers called “Darkness and Light‘ . Missus was kind and nice through the evening , I sang a song for her and she liked it and she said I did write very well now in my little book so I was pleased.