Forever Yours (15 page)

The three of them had continued on their walk, with Teresa and Patience describing the fun they’d had at the ball and how Mr Rowan had whisked Cook round the floor, but nothing that had been said had changed Constance’s mind about the future. She didn’t want to work her way up from scullerymaid to kitchenmaid and then further up the ladder until she reached the dizzy heights of first kitchenmaid like Agnes, only leaving her employment to take the job of cook elsewhere. When she heard the housemaids’ chatter at mealtimes, their lives on the other side of the green-baize doors seemed so much more interesting. They got to see the family and all the goings-on in the house, and although their work was hard and often laborious, the house was filled with beautiful things, and interesting people came and went. If she was destined to stay in service and have her liberty curtailed, she would far rather be there than in the kitchen.

She knew better than to make her views known, however. If Cook caught wind of how she was feeling her life wouldn’t be worth living. Mrs Craggs and Cook had never got on, according to the other kitchenmaids, and going over to the enemy would be the worst sort of betrayal. Not that she would ever have the opportunity anyway. Her fate had been sealed when she’d been taken on as a scullerymaid. Her destiny was on the wrong side of the green-baize doors.

Having finished the last of the potatoes for the day, Constance started on the vegetables. The sky had been blue and high first thing when she and Gracie had fetched the milk, cream, butter, cheese and eggs from the dairy. Flocks of birds had been calling and swooping as they gathered together before they went off to warmer climes for the winter, and it had reminded her that September was nearly over. This time last year she had still been at school, she had been happy. And now . . .

She paused, looking towards the small narrow window. Now she was a scullerymaid at Grange Hall.

Vincent’s patience was wearing thin. When Constance had first left the village he’d had no doubt that he’d find her within the month, three at the most. But both she and this aunt of hers had disappeared into thin air. He had been convinced the old couple wouldn’t want the girl to be more than a few miles away and that even if they discouraged her from visiting them, they would go and see her after a while. But to date they hadn’t budged and although there’d been the inevitable gossip about Constance’s sudden departure, it had been just that – gossip. All his enquiries had drawn a blank, and even when he’d gone to the expense of hiring the man who had traced one of the owners’ daughters when she’d run off with some ne’er-do-well the year before, it had proved fruitless.

He glanced again at the letter which had come that morning. He was very sorry, Mr Robson had written, but it wouldn’t be right to continue to take payment when there was no inkling of a lead in this matter. Maybe his client should face the fact that the girl in question had gone to parts unknown, maybe even abroad, and resolve to put the matter behind him?

‘Abroad,’ Vincent muttered in disgust, screwing the paper into a tight ball and throwing it at the wall. He had returned home an hour before and, having finished his dinner, was sitting in his armchair by the fire with a glass of brandy at his side. Since the hot spell had broken the weather had become colder, and October had been ushered in with a sharp nip in the air the week before.

Constance had not gone abroad. He stared into the flickering flames of the fire. He’d bet his life on that. But where the hell was she? As far as he could ascertain, her grandparents had kept mum on her whereabouts even with their nearest and dearest. Damn their eyes.

He finished his brandy in one gulp and stood up, too restless to continue sitting by the fireside. He needed to clear his head and decide how to proceed from here if Robson wasn’t going to come up trumps, because he
was
going to find her. He didn’t believe for one minute she’d left willingly. Since he’d had time to mull it over he was sure her grandparents had forced her to leave with the aunt they’d brought in. What young lass would give up the chance of a life of ease for the drudgery of service? No, Constance had told them of his intentions and they’d reacted like the ignorant scum they were, driven by fear of what their neighbours would say if their granddaughter married the weighman.

Pulling on his greatcoat he left the house without a word to Polly who had come into the kitchen doorway as he opened the front door. He rarely spoke to her if he could avoid it.

As it banged behind him, Polly stood quite still for a moment. Then, as though the air had gone out of a balloon, her body relaxed and she walked slowly into the sitting room, staring at his empty chair and the glass on the table beside it. Her gaze moved to the window and she wondered how long he’d be gone.

Did he know how much she hated him? Her chin gave a nervous jerk. No, she doubted if he even thought she had feelings beyond fear of him. And she did fear him; she was terrified of him, and with good reason. When she had first come to the cottage, she had thought she was the luckiest lass in the world. The comfort and colour and warmth had been dazzling after the grim confines of the workhouse. She thought she’d landed in heaven.

She gave a bitter ‘Huh!’ of a laugh, picking up the brandy glass and taking it into the kitchen.

She had thought him handsome in those days. She had even day-dreamed about him secretly when she’d been about her duties. At what point she had come to realise his devotion in always taking his mother’s dinner-tray to the sick woman and feeding her himself wasn’t what it seemed, she didn’t know. Perhaps it had been simply a feeling of unease at first that she couldn’t place. And then he’d been laid up with a bad dose of influenza and there had been three days on the trot when she’d seen to the older woman. By the second day Mrs McKenzie had been able to sit up and feed herself, and by the third the terrible sickness and pain that had her calling out most of the night had ceased.

When, on the fourth day,Vincent had literally dragged himself into the kitchen, his mother had gone downhill again. And Polly had known, even before she came across him stirring some white powder into a bowl of soup she’d prepared one night. He always sent her into his mother’s bedroom to see to her pillows and get her ready for dinner before he carried the tray through, but this particular night she had waited in the hall and then returned to the kitchen on the pretext of changing her soiled apron for a clean one. By then she’d felt she had to know for sure.

He had looked at her, that was all. But there had been something in his eyes that had sent terror into her soul. She had already been a little afraid of him, he was such a cold, distant man, but that in itself had been attractive in a strange sort of way. She had gabbled a few words about the clean apron, and he had told her he’d bought a tonic to add to his mother’s food, and the moment had passed.

Later that evening, when he had been sitting reading the paper in front of the sitting-room fire, he had called her into the room.

There was a sad case in the newspaper, he’d said softly. It appeared a couple had taken in a workhouse scut as servant, and the girl had abused their kindness by telling all sorts of stories about the master. When the man had accused the girl of stealing from them and explained that was why he’d had to discipline her, which had caused her to lie about him, the baggage had been put away for a long, long time.

He had raised his eyes at this point and looked at her, the same look he’d given earlier in the kitchen.

That was what always happened with workhouse vermin if they were foolish enough to bite the hand that fed them; the magistrates knew who to believe in these cases. His voice had been quiet, even gentle. One could kill such a girl and get off scot-free.

From that night, her fear of him had grown into a dread which could cause her to shake in her shoes, but it wasn’t until the night of his mother’s funeral that hatred and deep revulsion had been born in her. She had known that she was paying, and would go on paying, for not speaking out and trying to save Mrs McKenzie. With her death, demons had been released in her son.

She sank down at the kitchen table, gazing dully round the room. It was bonny. The whole house was bonny, but for years now she would have gladly traded living here for the hard life in the workhouse.

According to the matron’s records, she had been about six months old when she’d been found in a rented room next to the dead body of her mother. Neighbours had told the authorities that her father had been lost at sea some weeks previously, and that the couple had been relative newcomers to the area. Certainly no family had come forward to claim her. And so she had been taken to the workhouse nursery. She had been clothed and fed by the guardians, and as she had grown it had been repeatedly drummed into her that she had much to be grateful for. She had sometimes lain in her narrow iron bed at night, shivering in the icy cold dormitory under the thin grey blankets as she listened to the snores and coughs of the other inmates, and imagined a life in which there were no paupers’ uniforms, no infirm wards with their screams and cries and creeping stench, no punishment and beatings, and no labour mistress and matron. And now she knew what such a life was like.

Polly shook herself mentally. She didn’t know where Vincent had gone or how long he would be, but she’d better get on with the evening chores so he had no excuse to pick fault when he returned. However late he was, she knew better than to go to bed before him. She had only done that once in the days after his mother had died, and there had followed such a night of torment after he had come and dragged her from her room to his, that she hadn’t repeated the mistake. Since then she had waited to see if he expected her to service him or not.

Service him. She shut her eyes for a moment against the phrase Vincent used for what went on in his bedroom. She had been a virgin when he had first forced her, but even that time she had known that the things he had done to her hadn’t been normal between a man and a maid. It had been as though he was punishing her. And that had never changed. But she had never angered him, never crossed him in any way, so why? Why?

She stood up, walking into the scullery where the evening’s dirty dishes were waiting. Determinedly, as she’d done many times in the past, she made her mind go blank and mechanically now, like a wind-up doll, she set about washing the pots and pans.

 

There was the sharp scent of an early frost in the cold air once Vincent had left the cosy warmth of the cottage. It was going to be another hard winter. All the signs were there. Already the leaves were falling from the trees in their droves, and that morning he’d seen flocks of birds gorging themselves upon the fruits and berries and seeds in the hedgerows and fields, as though they knew the autumn was going to be a short one. They could be snowed in for weeks again.

He frowned darkly, the rage that had gripped him when he’d read Robson’s letter increasing. By now he’d imagined Constance would be back where he could see her and touch her. He had pictured her visiting the cottage and becoming acquainted with each room, and the two of them taking tea together before he took her back to her grandparents’. He would court her, as he had wished to court Hannah, and as soon as she was old enough he would make her his wife. That had been the plan. Instead, he was in no-man’s land and it was driving him mad.

With no conscious plan of where he was going, he followed the road to the crossroads, and there he stood hesitating for a moment. To the right were open fields and Barrashill Wood, and beyond that the villages of Nettlesworth and Kimblesworth.These were small compared to Sacriston, although Kimblesworth Colliery had a workforce of 600 men and boys. Once he had left the village, this road would be dark and lonely, but it wasn’t this which made him pause. He often walked at night and the blackness held no fear for him. The cosh in his coat pocket was protection enough, that and his fists and feet, and he felt more at one with nature in the darkness. He knew the place where a vixen had had her den and a litter of little ones, and deep in Barrashill Wood there was a spot where badgers came to play in the moonlight. But tonight it wasn’t the animals that were on his mind but a need to be near Constance in some way.

As he walked through the village there was no one about. It was cold and dark and the middle of a working week. Folk would mostly be in bed by now, since mornings started early in a mining community. When he reached the Cross Streets, he hesitated again. Everything in him wanted to make his way to the Grays’ back door and take the old couple by their throats until they told him where Constance was. To choke it out of them.

He smiled grimly to himself. Wouldn’t the neighbours love
that
! It’d set the tongues wagging with a vengeance. He’d be the butt of every wit who hated him, and that was all of them.

He walked on, past the school on his left and the rows of silent streets to his right, but as he drew level with the Colliery Inn the door opened and Art Gray stepped down into the street. For a moment surprise froze Vincent’s tongue. For months now he had watched the older man coming and going to the colliery, hoping to catch him alone. He had even followed him home a few times, but Gray had always been in the company of other miners and he’d had to keep a good distance behind them. He knew Constance’s grandfather frequented the Colliery Inn but it would be more than his life was worth to step inside there, besides which Gray would have his pals around him. But not tonight. Tonight he was alone.

‘Hello there. It’s a cold one.’ He kept his voice low and he could see the amazement in the other man’s eyes that he had stopped and spoken. ‘Been having a bevy or two to warm the cockles?’

It was some seconds before Art said flatly, ‘Just a couple.’

‘Here, wait on.’As Constance’s grandfather made to turn away, Vincent caught his arm. ‘I want a quiet word.’