Between Friends (20 page)

She kept her eyes cast down but the hateful scene which had taken place only that morning in Mrs Whitley’s bedroom flamed still in Meg’s enraged mind. He had hung over the end of the bed and spoken of the tasks which needed to be done, as though the other servants neglected them! Of the emigrants who were expected shortly, and who was to do the cooking if Mrs Whitley continued to keep to her bed? His attitude seemed to imply that the poor woman lolled there for her own pleasure, eating chocolates and grapes, no doubt, whilst his back was turned!

‘I will do Mrs Whitley’s work as well as my own,’ Meg had said through gritted teeth, determined to keep faith with the pledge she had made to Mr Lloyd’s lowering coffin.

‘I see! Am I to suppose from that remark that you have time to spare from your own duties?’

‘No sir.’ She bit her lips to prevent them forming the words of furious temper which longed to pour from them. ‘I am willing to work longer hours, that is what I meant.’

‘Just as you like,’ he said carelessly, ‘but make sure it is done to the standard I require.’

‘Yes sir.’ She breathed a sigh of relief but it appeared he had not yet finished. ‘And then there is the question of this room!’

‘This room?’ She was genuinely puzzled.

‘It could be let to a
paying
tenant.’

‘A paying …!’

‘Unless Mrs Whitley cares to pay for her board and lodgings!’

Mrs Whitley began to cough as the breath of fear caught in her throat.

‘Oh sir … oh sir …’ she moaned, the liquid in her lungs shifting thickly. ‘Please … I can get up sir … I’ll manage …’

‘Indeed you will not, Cook. In your condition!’ Meg was plainly horrified by the very idea, bending to soothe the distress Harris had thrust upon the sick woman. ‘I’ll do your work as well as my own until you’re fit so don’t you fret. Tom and Emm’ll help me.’ She held the frightened woman’s hand, patting it reassuringly but Harris only smiled his wolf’s smile and said gently. ‘We shall see.’

He moved towards the door. His face distorted in a grimace of distaste as another bout of phlegmy coughing attacked Mrs Whitley, then he turned as though in afterthought. ‘Oh, and there must be no more coal brought up here, Megan. See to it, will you please? Hemingway’s can hardly be expected to warm the room of every servant. If Mrs Whitley has a fire then they will all
want
one. This is not a charitable institution, you know. I am accountable to Mr Hemingway for every penny which is spent and if I make him no profit …’

Before he could finish his sentence Meg leaped away from the bed and Cook’s desperate, clutching hand.

‘But you can’t keep a sick woman up here in a cold room,’ she gasped. ‘The doctor says she’s to be kept in a constant, warm temperature. The cold air makes her cough. It irritates her lungs and she can’t stop it. This room’s at the top of the house. It’s like ice without a bit of a fire. You can’t leave her in a cold room …’

‘Can I not?’ His voice was dangerous.

‘Oh please sir, you can see how she is. She needs to be kept warm and …’

‘Then she must come down to the kitchen. She could perhaps do something useful to earn her keep. Something at which she can sit …?’

‘She’s not strong enough.’ Meg’s voice was explosive. Cook was not
really
her responsibility. She was not even a relative but Meg’s fierce loyalty and challenging defence of those she considered oppressed made her unable to back down. She was trying desperately to control her own runaway temper since she was just beginning to realise that he had the upper hand; that he was the master and she the servant and that should she displease him he would have not only her but Cook as well out on the pavement in the snow. She was nothing but a skivvy to him and there were a hundred others who would clamour to take her place.

Biting the inside of her lip to stop the heedless, maddened words pouring from them Meg breathed deeply before she spoke. She was not afraid of him. Not yet and not as she had been in that first moment of meeting when her subconscious mind had given her that strange warning of what was to come. She was only sixteen but she was strong, physically and in her will and on her own she was a match for any man, this one included, she thought contemptuously, but there was Mrs Whitley cowering in her bed and where was she to go if Harris turned them out. If Meg defied Harris as she longed to do, all of them would suffer. She was caught in a trap, a trap made for her by her own stubborn allegiance to those she loved. She could not see Mrs Whitley flung willy-nilly into the street, nor freeze to death in this room.

Her eyes narrowed to gleaming amber slits and her jaw was rigid as she spoke.

‘I’ll pay for the coal myself,’ she hissed.

‘Yourself! In what way?’ His eyes flickered over her salaciously and Meg felt herself prickle nastily inside her clothes. God, she had time to think, if Tom or Martin were to hear this bloody conversation they’d half kill this bugger for there was no mistaking what he meant.

‘I’ll pay for it out of my wages,’ she replied coldly, her young face set into a mould of strangely mature dignity. There was hauteur in her manner as she went on. ‘I’ll buy it by the bucket from the coal man and Tom will bring it up. I trust you will allow me to use Hemingway’s bucket!’

She was pleased to see the expression of mortification twist his thin features but it passed in a moment as though he was reluctant to allow her to see she had flicked him on the raw.

‘From your wages?’ He managed a smile.

‘Yes.’

‘And who is to pay the doctor’s bills?’

Meg looked round wildly, her disdain shattered now but the satisfied look of triumph on Harris’ face and the terror of the woman in the bed stiffened her resolve again. She tightened her soft lips and her eyes were steady and filled with contempt.

‘I will pay them myself!’

‘From your wages?’

‘Yes!’

‘And how much do you expect to receive?’

She suspected a trap and hesitated, confusion and a fearful dread holding her tongue. She was like an animal in a cage looking for a way out. As soon as she thought she had found it the door was slammed in her face. He was up to something, she knew it. Some scheme which made him almost purr with pleasure, but what?

‘I … don’t … I’m not sure …’ Her voice had lost its arrogance now.

The man looked down at his immaculate shirt front, the one which Meg had ironed only the night before and flicked away an imaginary spot. He cleared his throat nastily before he spoke.

‘I have decided to review the servants’ wages,’ he said. ‘Mr Hemingway has discussed with me economies which must be made. The emigrant trade is in the doldrums somewhat and Mr Hemingway feels that a budget must be worked out in order that the house may be kept open and the servants of it retain their
jobs
. A reckoning will be made and kept to and I intend to see to it immediately. But you will hear all about my plans when I speak to you and the other servants later in the day.’

He became brisk as though the day was wasting and time to stand idly and chat with servants could not be spared.

‘Oh … and perhaps you would be good enough to remove that bucket of coal to the cellar at once. It
is
Hemingway’s coal, is it not? Yes? I thought so, but by all means use the bucket when you purchase your own coal. I’m sure Mr Hemingway would have no objection to
that
!’

Meg stood in the line of frightened servants and listened to Benjamin Harris as he spoke at length on the matter of the economies he and Mr Hemingway had worked out whilst upstairs Mrs Whitley shivered in her rapidly cooling room – they could hear her cough even beyond the closed door of the kitchen – waiting on the moment Tom could be spared to run to the coal merchant for some coal.

It seemed that the economies their new master considered urgent were the cutting down on the amount and quality of food provided for the emigrants, the increase in the hours the servants must work in order to do away with the necessity to employ others, and the cutting of their own wages!

‘… and so your wages will be halved in order to ensure that we keep within the strict budget set us by Mr Hemingway. I shall buy the provisions and keep the accounts myself.’

They stood before him as he warmed to his theme and his buttocks at the kitchen fire. ‘Oh, and Fraser …’ He turned smilingly to Tom. ‘I’m afraid it’s back to boot-boy for you unless you would care to try for something elsewhere?’ He waited a moment, looking smoothly into Tom’s wooden face. ‘No! You will stay on as odd job boy?’

Tom nodded his head briefly, his jaw clenched and Meg felt her heart flinch in pain for him. He was doing this for her, and for Mrs Whitley. If he was alone he would no more take these insults, this demeaning of his pride in his work than she would. He would be off, cap slung to the back of his head, giving to Harris no more than a contemptuous gesture, knowing that somewhere there was work,
any work
, to be had for a young, well set-up lad such as he. He had been so proud of his promotion and the trust put in him by Mr Lloyd but he was not the man to let
another
treat him as Harris did. There were men, men who had families to feed who would think themselves lucky to work for more than fourteen hours a day and take home the meagre portion Harris offered and Tom knew it, but he would not leave her and Mrs Whitley, nor those who needed him now.

But Benjamin Harris had not yet done with Tom.

‘Of course I must deduct more than a few shillings a week from you Fraser. An odd job boy does not earn ten shillings a week, or anything like it, does he, especially if he is given board and food!’

Tom said nothing and Meg began to feel that familiar flare of temper grow in her. Why didn’t he stand up for himself, the fool. They were all to have their wages halved and only God knew what Tom would end up with. When he was a boy of twelve he had earned three shillings a week, so what was he to have now. The same? He was a man, almost nineteen and had been held in high esteem by Mr Lloyd. She knew, for she had heard him say what a conscientious worker Tom was and trustworthy too.

‘You do credit to those who raised you, Tom,’ she had heard the elderly gentleman say a dozen times.

Meg felt that familiar surge of rage which had got her into trouble so often before. It seemed it did no good to tell yourself you must be silent when you had a will such as hers but she must, she must. It was hard, listening to the way he spoke to Tom but what else were they to do but submit?

Yet years of defending the underdog, of challenging the injustices she found around her had given her an almost instant reflex for ‘sticking up’ for those she considered badly done by and her determination to hold her tongue seemed impossible. Her mouth opened of its own accord!

‘You can’t do that, Mr Harris,’ it said.

Benjamin Harris turned his head in a leisurely fashion and in his cold eye something stirred. His face was expressionless and his usual smile was missing. Behind the smooth blankness of his face his crisp brain, that which was accounting the money he was saving here and about to put in his own pocket, was becoming stimulated by a feeling he had never before encountered. Here was a girl, a child really though she had the glorious figure of a woman, who seemed to think she was the champion of all those about her from the old crone upstairs to these dolts who trembled before him and said nothing in their own defence. He found her fighting spirit excited him. He had never met it before but with
her
head thrown back, her hair tumbling in a profusion of glossy, angry curls about her brow and her eyes flashing thunderbolts he thought he might just enjoy breaking that same spirit which, though it angered him might give his work an added zest! The girl could be the most aggravating creature in the way she challenged his every move and statement but … well … one could hardly ignore that heaving bosom!

His eyes narrowed with anticipated enjoyment!

‘Yes Megan, you have something to say?’

‘Tom has been here for five years and Mr Lloyd always said what a good worker he was. He told him he was to work with Mrs Whitley in the running of the house and that he was to try his hand at the accounts …’

Harris shook his head as though in sudden understanding of where the money was going but Meg wouldn’t let it pass.

‘… and Mr Lloyd always checked them and found them correct.’ Her face was indomitable in her anger.

‘So! What is the point you wish to make, Megan?’

‘Well, you can’t just make him odd job boy again and give him a few bob a week …’

‘And why not?’

‘Well, it’s not fair. He’s worth more than that.’

They both looked towards Tom and Meg was infuriated anew by his silence. She knew he was as angry as herself by Harris’ heartless treatment of Mrs Whitley and had said so in the privacy of the kitchen but he had advised caution for the time being, saying they must not dash headlong into open rebellion. This man was not one to take kindly to having his authority questioned. Though he said Mr Hemingway was behind all this it seemed hard to believe from what Martin had told them of the old gentleman, so best wait and see which way the wind blew before going off half-cocked, as he put it. But it was hard for Meg to accept. Why didn’t Tom speak up? Martin would have! He wouldn’t let this chap walk all over him as Tom was doing.