Chaff upon the Wind (6 page)

‘I’m sorry, Mrs G. It’s just that . . . Oh!’ She jumped and looked up at the clanging bell above the door.

‘By heck, Kitty, you look as if you’ve been summoned to the torture chamber.’ Mrs Grundy leaned towards her and asked, shrewdly, ‘Not getting trouble from that little
madam already, are ya?’

‘Yes, no, well . . .’

‘Mek up ya mind then, lass.’ She too glanced up at the bell. ‘That’s the mistress anyway, so I should run along and see what she wants.’

I know what she wants, Kitty thought, trying to swallow the fear that rose in her throat. That’s why I don’t want to go up. But there was no escape as the cook said again, ‘Go
on, Kitty. Don’t keep her waiting.’

‘There you are, Kitty. I thought this morning I’d teach you how to do my hair,’ Mrs Franklin greeted her. ‘I’ve an hour to spare and you can
practise putting it up in this style for me. It’ll help you to understand how to do Miriam’s as well. Now, I’ve laid out all the pins and combs, so let’s begin, shall
we?’

Kitty moved forward to stand behind her mistress who was seated in front of her dressing table. The next hour was pleasantly spent and, for a while, Kitty even managed to forget the cloud
hanging over her.

‘There,’ Mrs Franklin said at last. ‘You’ve done very well, Kitty, for your first attempts. Now, run along and see if Miss Miriam needs you.’ She smiled. ‘I
expect she’s probably gone riding and left her bedroom looking as if a whirlwind has passed through it.’

‘Yes, madam.’

Closing Mrs Franklin’s bedroom door behind her, Kitty took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders and marched across the landing to the opposite wing and knocked on Miss Miriam’s
door. When there was no answer, she opened the door and stepped into the room. Glancing around, she saw at once that Mrs Franklin was quite right. Miriam had left her room looking as if it had
indeed been hit by a tornado. The bedclothes were pushed back into an untidy heap and clothes were strewn around the room. The wardrobe door was open and two drawers in the dressing table were
pulled out, their contents tossed on the floor as if she had been searching for something in frantic haste. Face powder was littered on the carpet and the glass stopper of a perfume bottle lay in
the middle of it. Handkerchiefs, combs and hairpins were scattered everywhere.

Surveying the chaos, Kitty shook her head and made a little noise of disapproval. Miss Miriam certainly knew how to test her maid’s patience one way or another. Then she smiled wryly,
pushed her sleeves up above her elbows and set to work. After all, Kitty reminded herself, this was what she was being paid to do.

An hour later, the bedroom was restored to order. As Kitty was laying clean underwear in the huge chest of drawers, the door opened and Miriam, dressed for riding, poked her
head round it. ‘There you are. I’ve just been to see Teddy and he’s asking for you.’

Kitty turned and stared at the girl. ‘But I—’

Miriam, obviously thinking Kitty was about to make an excuse that she had too much work to do, waved her hand airily. ‘Oh leave all that. You can do that any time. Go and spend half an
hour with Teddy. He gets so fed up being on his own.’

To Kitty’s surprise, the girl glanced down and fiddled with the whip she held in her hands. ‘I know I ought to spend more time with him, but I can’t.’ She bit her lip and
added, ‘I – I tried to stay with him just now, but it upsets me to see him suffering so. He’s bad this morning.’

For a brief moment, the selfish pout to Miriam’s mouth softened and a look of sadness flitted across her bright eyes. She turned away swiftly and Kitty was left staring at the closed
door.

So, she thought with amazement, Miss Miriam has a soft spot for her sickly younger brother. For the first time, Kitty’s heart warmed towards her new young mistress. If she was kind to him,
even if to no one else, then Kitty could forgive her a great deal.

Edward was sitting up in bed against a mountain of pillows, his lips parted as he fought to pull in the next breath.

‘Oh Master Edward, can I get you anything? Shall I fetch your mother?’

He shook his head and gasped his reply in short, staccato phrases, pulling in a rasping breath between each one. ‘No – it’s all right. It’s just an asthma
attack.’

It was very frightening to watch the young boy fight for each breath, his skin shining with sweat, his lips tinged with blue, yet Kitty was not afraid. Before she had come into service, she had
often sat through the night with her younger brother, Timothy, while her mother had a few hours’ rest.

‘My mother says – you’re her new – maid. And Miriam’s too.’

Kitty avoided a direct answer by saying, ‘I don’t think you ought to try to talk, Master Edward. Lie quietly. Shall I come back when you’re feeling better?’

‘No . . .’ His voice was high-pitched. ‘Don’t leave me. Please – stay. I – don’t want to be alone.’ His hands plucked at the edge of the
bedclothes covering him.

She moved to the side of the bed and hitched herself up to sit on the edge. ‘My brother Timothy gets asthma. Me mam always tells him to lie ever so still and try to let himself go limp all
over. Ya know, like this.’ Kitty slumped her shoulders, dropped her head and let her arms and hands relax completely. ‘And try to breathe gently. Don’t try to take in deep
breaths, just little ones.’

The boy let out a breath and his hands lay still. He closed his eyes and for a moment there was no sound in the room. Kitty watched him. Now he wasn’t breathing at all.

‘Ya’ve got to breathe a bit, though, Master Edward.’

A small smile twitched the corner of his mouth and his eyes opened. He tried to taking a gentle, shallow breath and then pushed it out again, wheezing as he did so.

He followed her instructions for several minutes, not saying anything, while Kitty sat beside him, just watching.

‘It’s a horrid feeling,’ he said at last. ‘As if someone’s sitting on your chest.’

Kitty smiled. ‘Timothy always ses it’s like being buried in a haystack.’

‘I know – what he means.’ He paused for another few moments, concentrating on his shallow breathing and trying to lie still. Then he said, ‘Talk to me Kitty. Tell me
about your family.’

‘Why should you want to know about my family? We’re not anybody interesting.’

‘You are to me, Kitty Clegg,’ he murmured, so softly that she scarcely caught his words.

Kitty shrugged. Maybe, she thought with sudden intuition, any conversation was preferable to the lonely hours he spent shut away in his sickroom.

‘Well, now,’ she said settling herself more comfortably on the bed beside him. ‘There’s me mam and dad and us eight kids.’

‘Eight? Heavens!’

‘Lie still, Master Edward, and don’t talk, else I won’t stay.’

‘Please, Kitty. Go on. I won’t say another word.’

‘Promise?’

The boy pressed his lips together and nodded.

‘Me dad’s the stationmaster and we live in one of the station houses. Me mam cleans the waiting room and the offices, an’ that.’ She paused and then added, ‘I
didn’t know until I came to work here three years ago that me mam used to work for your grandmother.’

The boy’s eyes widened and he opened his mouth, but remembering his promise just in time he closed it again, giving a slight shrug with his thin shoulders as a negative reply.

Kitty nodded, as if understanding what he had been going to say. ‘No, you’ll not remember it, ’cos it was before I was born, before me man and dad were married. Anyway,’
she went on, ‘I’m the eldest at sixteen, then there’s our George who works on the land. Then there’s Timothy, he’s the one who has asthma, then Milly, she’s
thirteen and she’s just come to work here to take my place as kitchen maid. After her, there’s Grace, Jane and the little one, Bobbie.’

Silently, Edward held up seven fingers and looked at her questioningly.

‘Oh yes,’ Kitty murmured and a note of sadness crept into her voice. ‘There was eight of us. Little Connie died not long after I started working here. She – she got
whooping cough. Connie, Gracie and Timothy all got it, but she was so bad . . .’ Her voice faltered, still remembering the dreadful day when Mrs Grundy had sat her down on a kitchen chair and
broken the awful news to her that her little sister had died. ‘The mistress is giving you a week off to go home and help ya mam,’ the cook had said. ‘Isn’t that kind of her,
now?’

Kitty felt again the lump in her throat that she had felt then. It had been her first direct experience of her mistress’s thoughtfulness.

Now Edward did speak, the painful rasp of his breathing already easier. ‘I had whooping cough too, three years ago. That’s when this asthma started. Maybe Timothy too?’

Kitty nodded. ‘Yeah. Me mam said it left him with a weakness. Maybe you’re right, maybe . . .’

Heavy footsteps sounded on the landing and the bedroom door flew open.

Kitty twisted round and her heart thumped as the booming voice of Mr Franklin filled the room with anger. ‘What on earth are you doing in this room, girl? Out, at once.’

Kitty slid down from the bed and scuttled out of the room, but not before she had heard Edward’s breathing once again become harsh and agonizing.

‘I thought I told you that girl was never to work above stairs?’

Kitty, on her way down to the kitchen, her arms full of Miss Miriam’s laundry, paused outside the drawing-room door at the sound of the master’s voice raised in anger and knew
instinctively that she was the subject of their discussion. She held her breath. Now it would come. Now she would hear the master telling his wife what Miriam must, by this time, have told him
about their battle.

But Mrs Franklin was speaking calmly. ‘I didn’t think you would object.’ She was quite unruffled by her husband’s temper, adding, with mysterious but deliberate
intention, ‘In the circumstances.’

Mr Franklin grunted. ‘It’s one thing to employ the girl, quite another for her to have free run of the house where I might encounter her.’

‘Henry, the girl cannot help being who she is. She’s a good child and she has already shown that she can handle Miriam.’

Kitty winced as she continued to eavesdrop. Surely now, it was going to come out what had happened between her and Miss Miriam!

To her surprise, Mrs Franklin was saying instead, ‘I am thankful to have her here. I never thought I’d hear myself say it, but I am. She has always been a good little kitchen maid,
and now she’s worthy of something better. And she’s so good with poor Edward too.’

‘ “Poor Edward”, be damned! The boy’s a milksop, a mother’s boy. He’ll never amount to anything worthwhile if you continue to mollycoddle him.’

‘Edward will be a fine young man,’ Mrs Franklin said in a voice so quiet now that Kitty scarcely heard her words, ‘if he lives long enough.’

‘Stuff and nonsense,’ Mr Franklin boomed. ‘There’s nothing wrong with the boy that a day’s riding in the fresh air wouldn’t cure. Thank God for Miriam, I say.
Now that girl’s got spirit. Takes after me . . .’

Kitty had never imagined that the mistress – that lovely, gentle creature – could be so authoritative and towards, of all people in the world, her husband, but now, there was silence
as Mrs Franklin made no reply.

‘Clegg. Clegg! Where are you?’ Miriam’s voice echoed shrilly from the first-floor landing and Kitty nearly dropped the tea tray she was carrying down the
stairs from Mrs Franklin’s sitting room.

‘Coming, miss.’

She hurried up the steps into the kitchen and banged the tray down on to the kitchen table. ‘Wash them pots for us, our Milly. Miss Miriam’s shouting for me and she don’t
’alf sound in a temper. I’d best go straight up.’

‘But I’ve got all these taties to peel for Mrs Grundy. I can’t—’

But Kitty was gone, through the door and up the stairs two at a time.

Miriam was sitting at her dressing table, her long auburn hair cascading down her back in a wild tangle of curls.

‘And about time. I want you to brush my hair and put it up. I suppose you do know how to put hair up, don’t you?’ The girl eyed Kitty sceptically through the mirror.

Silently thanking Mrs Franklin for the hour’s instruction, Kitty said, ‘I’ll do my best, miss.’

‘Get on with it then,’ Miriam said, tossing the hairbrush towards her.

As Kitty stood behind her young mistress and brushed the long shining hair with easy, rhythmic strokes of the hairbrush, Miriam said softly, ‘So, neither of us went telling tales,
then?’

‘Evidently not, miss.’

Miriam’s eyebrows rose fractionally and she pulled her mouth down at the corners and repeated mockingly, ‘ “Evidently not.” Such big words for a kitchen maid.’

Kitty, without pausing in her task, took a deep breath. It was time to take a firm stand. ‘Am I? Is that what I am, then, Miss Miriam? Just a kitchen maid?’

She could see the girl struggling with an inner conflict, could see Miriam debating with herself, realizing that, despite the disadvantages, it was better to have Kitty Clegg as her maid then no
maid at all.

In the girl’s green eyes there was a sudden glint of mischief, which Kitty saw at once and understood.

‘Well,’ Miriam drawled, ‘if you are so determined to be my maid, then you’d better learn to speak properly. No more “I aren’t” or “ya
mam”.’

Kitty bridled. ‘I aren’t ashamed of the way I talk,’ she began, but then, with the same spark of devilment, she mimicked the speech and mannerisms of her betters. ‘But I
can, if I so wish, talk like the gentry, m’lady.’ She waved her hand in the air in an affected gesture.

Miriam’s eyes widened as she stared at Kitty in the mirror. Then suddenly she threw back her head and laughed. ‘Do you know, Kitty Clegg, I think, after all, that we might do very
well together.’

There was no fear that Kitty could not have time off to be Jack’s Harvest Nell, for it was the custom at the Manor Farm that when nearly all the corn had been cut, a
small circle of uncut wheat was always left in the centre of the last field. On the Saturday of Harvest Festival weekend, this would be cut and the thresherman would fashion a sheaf-high corn
maiden from it. In triumph the last load would be carried to the farm’s stackyard amid much shouting and laughter and merrymaking, with the Harvest Queen sitting on top. On the Sunday, the
Franklin family and all their servants, including the threshermen, would attend the Harvest Festival service in the church in the centre of town.