Off the Rails (8 page)

‘You’ll see him in church a’ Sunday,’ Mrs Cadwallader told her, ‘up in t’front pews with t’nobs, a’ course. He’s very grand when he goes to church. No one can miss him. I’ll point him out to you, if you like, bein’ as you’re interested.’

‘That would be kindly,’ Jane said, and she smiled as she passed her empty plate to the scullery maid. And sitting there in her warm, newly cleaned kitchen, surrounded by all these people who were going to be her staff, she wondered whether this pushy man really would turn out to be George Hudson and, if he was, whether he would remember her.

Lizzie Hudson was in the little room that was now the nursery trying to coax her son into his petticoats ready for church. It was a difficult job because although he was only fifteen months old he had a will of his own and was making it just a little too clear that he didn’t want to be dressed. She’d had a terrible tussle with him and she was beginning to feel cross and weary. If only they could hire a nursemaid they could leave him at home to play with his toys and go off without him, which would be the sensible thing to do. She’d tried to suggest it to George but he’d been quite brusque with her and told her they couldn’t afford it, not when they’d only the one child, which had hurt her feelings terribly – for, after all, it wasn’t her fault that her poor little James had taken ill and died – although of course she couldn’t say so. There were times when it wasn’t sensible to say anything much to Mr Hudson, particularly when he was busy with business matters.
As he was that morning. He’d been sitting at the breakfast table reading the paper for over an hour. About the new railways, of course. He was
passionately
interested in railways and forever telling her that someone was going to make a mint of money out of them. But railways meant nothing to her. Her life was babies and praying to keep them alive.

‘Is that child still not dressed?’ George said, suddenly appearing beside her. ‘He’ll mek us late.’

Lizzie tried to explain that the child was fractious but his father wasn’t interested. ‘I’ll give you five more minutes,’ he said, ‘an’ if he’s not ready by then I shall go without you. I’m to walk home with Uncle Matthew after service and he’ll not tek kindly if I’m not there to greet him. Five minutes.’ And he was gone.

‘Tha’lt not let me dress ’ee, will ’ee, Dickie,’ Lizzie sighed, hanging the petticoat on the towel rail.

And the baby, sensing that he had won, clapped his plump hands and babbled at her.

Matthew Bottrill strolled through the gate into the churchyard of Holy Trinity two minutes after his nephew. The two men greeted one another with their customary handshake and stood together for a few minutes exchanging pleasantries like the old friends they had now become before they entered the building and progressed up the aisle together towards their respective pews. Jane and Milly and Mrs Cadwallader, waiting humbly for their turn to enter the building, had a clear and revealing view of the meeting.

Well, well, well, Jane thought, as the two well-dressed backs disappeared into the shadows of the porch, so it is him and Mr Bottrill does think well of him. And she wondered when she would see him at Monkgate.

But the months passed and Jane and Milly settled into their new lives and, true to her promise, Jane bought two books of fairy tales to amuse them, one collected by a man called Charles Perrault and translated ‘from the French’ and the other ‘translated from the German’, both of which they enjoyed very much, and although Mr Hudson was a frequent visitor, it was late November before he and Jane finally came face to face.

At the end of September the Stockton and Darlington Railway had been officially opened for the carriage of freight and Mr Bottrill had been
grumbling
at the folly of it ever since. He and George were sitting by the fire in the drawing room that afternoon while he held forth about it. Outside the window, the city was dank with fog, which rose from the river to clog the narrow lanes and choke anyone foolish enough to venture out in it. George had been coughing ever since he arrived, despite the fact that he’d covered his nose and mouth with a muffler before he set out, and when half an hour
had passed and he’d got no better, his uncle paused in his complaint, rang the bell and ordered a dish of tea to ease his lungs.

Jane made the tea but there was no maid free to carry it up to the drawing room and Josh had disappeared, probably to ‘keep out the damp’, so she picked up the tray and carried it upstairs herself. She set it carefully on the table before the fire and then closed the curtains to keep out the worst of the fog. She was turning to leave when the visitor stood up. For a few seconds she stood quite still before him, disturbed to realize that her heart was racing. Seen close to, he was very much changed. The boyish good looks that had charmed her so easily when she was fifteen were quite gone. Now the man who stood before her was portly and self-satisfied and had a fat face. What was worse, it was plain from the way he was looking at her that he didn’t have the slightest idea who she was. It was hurtful to have to accept that she’d been used and forgotten but that was clearly what had happened. She bobbed a quick curtsey and left the room, holding her head high and her spine straight, cursing George Hudson in her heart.

After that, she avoided the drawing room whenever her one-time lover was in the house. One day she would be revenged, she knew that even more clearly now, but in the meantime there was no necessity for him to see her. If he wanted to visit, let him. It was no concern of hers. So the months passed and became a successful year. New staff were hired; Milly celebrated her eleventh birthday and started work as an under housemaid; Felix sent them the occasional letter to tell them about the games he was playing and what a lark he was having with the other chaps; Sarah wrote to say that she was engaged to be married and would soon be Lady Livingston; and Jane saw her mother every other Sunday and had a visit from her every single week all through the summer. And although she often thought of George Hudson, she never saw him at all.

But then something happened that would change her decision and her life.

A little before Christmas, Josh went into his master’s bedroom one dark morning with his customary pot of hot chocolate and found him lying on the floor unconscious. He fled to the kitchen in a panic, demanding to know what he was to do, and naturally it was Jane who took command, ordering one of the housemaids to run out and fetch a surgeon and another to bring her lint and a bandage in case the master was hurt. Then she and Josh and the boot-boy went back to the bedroom to see what was to be done. Mr Bottrill was still where Josh had left him but now he was groaning.

‘Lift him on t’bed and let’s take a look at him,’ Jane said to the two men and when they’d done as they were told she sat on the edge of the bed and examined his head and arms, checking him for bruises and looking in his
hair for cuts, neither of which she could find. While she was checking him over, he gave a long shuddering groan and opened his eyes.

‘Where am I?’ he said and his speech was slurred. ‘Wha’s going on?’

Jane explained that he’d had a fall but that made him tetchy. ‘I don’t fall,’ he said crossly. ‘I ain’t a man to fall. Never been known to fall in all me life. Never.’

There was no point in arguing with him. With luck the surgeon would be there presently. Let him explain. He’d be better at it.

He was a very small man and a very subservient one but he was firm in his diagnosis. Mr Bottrill had taken a fit and now he must be bled. He would see to it immediately. Mr Bottrill was
not
pleased to hear it but he wasn’t well enough to refuse. He groaned a great deal but he submitted to a vein in his arm being opened and to the blood being collected in a cup.

‘Now Mrs Smith,’ the surgeon said to Jane, ‘he must take plenty of rest and light nourishing food, if you please. I will do myself the honour of calling again tomorrow.’ Although his patient complained that he felt a great deal worse for having been bled, the next day the surgeon applied his scalpel for the second time, drew off another cupful of blood and left well pleased with himself.

The old man grumbled and swore and said the surgeon was making him ill and that evening he took another fit and was unconscious for an
alarmingly
long time. That Sunday, prayers were said at The Holy Trinity Church for his recovery, and after the service George Hudson waited for Jane and Milly to emerge from the porch and approached them, hat in hand. He was sorry to hear of Mr Bottrill’s illness, he said. Would Mrs Smith be so kind as to carry his respects to his uncle and tell him he would visit on Monday.

He called on Monday and Thursday and Saturday, bringing titbits to tempt his uncle’s appetite. Josh said he wondered he didn’t bring his bed and set up residence. At Christmas he arrived with a jar of calves’ foot jelly, in January he brought a pot of shrimps, in March two jars of honey, in April, when his uncle was feeling too weak to leave his bed for more than an hour at a time, it was marzipan.

‘Tha’rt a good lad,’ Matthew said, looking at the sweetmeats.

‘I do my best,’ George told him. ‘You
are
family, when all’s said and done. We have to look out for family.’

‘Try telling t’others,’ the old man growled. ‘They’re in here night and day. I don’t see
them
bringing gifts. Not even at Christmas time. They only come on account of the money. They don’t fool me. I tell ’ee, George, you’re the only one with any heart at all.’

It was time to make a play for preferment. ‘It’ud serve ’em right,’ George said, ‘if you were to leave it all to someone else.’

The idea made the old man look devilish, despite his weakness. ‘Aye, so twould.’

‘Cut ’em off wi’out a penny,’ George said, pressing home. ‘That’ud show ’em.’

The old man giggled. ‘I’ve a mind to do just that.’

‘Why not?’ George urged. ‘Think how they’ve hurt your feelings all these years, plaguing and pestering. Show ’em who’s boss, eh?’

‘Aye. I’ve half a mind.’

‘I’d like to see their faces if you do.’

‘Aye. And so you shall, boy. So you shall. I shall see to it. What sport, eh?’

The next day he sent Josh with a letter summoning his lawyer to his bedside. Six weeks later he was dead.

F
OR A FUNERAL
it was a very jolly occasion. The nephews and nieces arrived in force, wearing their best clothes and in a state of barely concealed excitement, as though they had arrived for a party. George had taken care to be soberly dressed and had his own hopes under tight and private control. He watched them as they greeted one another and admired the act they were putting on but they didn’t fool him for a second. They might be saying the right things but their greed burst through the seams of their fine clothes and shone from every pore of their caring faces.

The funeral breakfast was held in the drawing room at Monkgate where they nibbled at pastries and drank a considerable amount of wine until the lawyer arrived in his sober clothes with a black bag tucked under his black arm and that housekeeper following quietly behind him. Then they took up positions in the row of chairs that had been set out for the purpose and waited with avid impatience to be told how much of the Bottrill fortune they were going to be given. It was so large that, even if the old man had divided it up between them, they would still be taking away a comfortable income.

‘This should not delay us for long, ladies and gentlemen,’ the lawyer said. ‘Mr Bottrill was admirably precise in his instructions.’ He took the
will from his black bag and began to read. ‘… last will and testament of the late Mr Matthew Bottrill, written and witnessed before me on the twelfth of April in the year of Our Lord 1827.’ Then he cleared his throat while they all waited. ‘There are two small bequests,’ he said, and began to read again. ‘I leave my gold watch to Richard Hudson, infant son of Mr George Hudson. I leave the clothes and wearing apparel of my late wife Ann to my housekeeper Mrs Jane Smith in token of her faithful service.’

The cousins turned in their seats to nod approval at Jane, who was sitting quietly at the back of the group. It was rather a waste to bequeath his gold watch to a child, but leaving clothes to a housekeeper was only right and proper and she was a nice quiet body and not like to give herself airs.

When Jane had left the room, the lawyer spoke again. ‘After deducting such sums as have been spent on funeral arrangements,’ he said, ‘Mr Bottrill left his entire estate in land, property and capital, to one person.’ Then he paused because there was a shiver of excitement in the room as the nephews and nieces realized what an enormous fortune that one person was going to receive and each of them hoped to be the lucky one. All eyes turned to the lawyer and held him gimlet-fixed until he spoke again. The tension in the room was so strong it was as if the air was singing with it.

‘One person,’ the lawyer said, looking round at them all and smiling benignly, ‘and that one person is his nephew Mr George Hudson.’

There was an uproar. ‘How could that possibly be?’ they shouted, waving their arms. ‘There must be some mistake.’ ‘He would never have passed us by in this way. Never. Never. Not our dear Uncle Matthew.’ ‘We are his nearest relations. Nearest and dearest.’ ‘You’ve got it wrong, sir.’

George was so happy he was grinning fit to split his face in half. He left his seat and walked across to the lawyer to shake him by the hand and thank him for his services. His relations were still shouting, red in the face with the heat of their anger and disappointment. One of the nieces had had her bonnet crumpled by a flailing arm, another was weeping. Two of the nephews were striding about the room. It was a triumph.

They were making such a noise that Jane and Mrs Cadwallader and the maids could hear them in the kitchen, where they were now setting the table for their dinner.

‘What on earth’s going on up there?’ Jane said, lifting her head towards the sound. ‘I thought this was supposed to be a funeral.’

‘Don’t sound much like a funeral, and that’s a fact,’ Mrs Cadwallader said sourly.

‘Where’s Josh?’ Jane asked her. ‘If anyone’ll know, he will. Nip upstairs, Sally, and see if you can find him.’

He was standing outside the drawing room door listening to the outburst. ‘Shush!’ he said, putting his finger to his lips. ‘They’re going at it hammer and tongs. Come to blows I shouldn’t wonder.’

At that moment the door was pushed open with such violence that the handle hit the wall and two of the nephews rushed out and shouted their way downstairs, so he had to leave Sally standing and go off and attend to them.

‘Tell Mrs Smith I’ll be down presently,’ he said as he sprinted off.

He was in the kitchen and spreading the news ten minutes later. ‘We’re to have a new master,’ he said.

‘Which one?’ Jane asked. Not that it mattered. A master was a master and anyone would do as long as he paid your wages. But when she heard his name, she was horribly taken aback. Was she really going to be a servant to the man who had treated her so badly? The very idea was horrible, crushing, unfair, not to be borne. I shall just have to find another position, she thought. I can’t stay here and work for
him
. I’ll go to the next hiring and see what’s on offer.

But George Hudson was too quick for her, just as he’d been thirteen years ago. By the end of the afternoon, he and his wife and his chubby little boy had arrived to take up residence and he hadn’t been in the house for more than an hour before he called all his servants together in the drawing room and told them how he intended to run the place. First of all he announced with a broad smile that he was thinking of increasing their wages.

‘I’ve took a look at t’books,’ he said, ‘and ’tis my opinion you could be worth a deal more than my uncle paid you. So I tell you what I propose to do. You will work for me at the old rate for a week or two, so’s I can see how you get on, and then I’ll reconsider. Can’t say fairer than that but then I’m a fair man. You play fair by me and I’ll play fair by you.’

He’s charming them, Jane thought, recognizing the persuasive talk and the smiling face, and they’re taking it in and believing him. Well, you don’t fool me, George Hudson. I shan’t be charmed a second time, no matter how much you might be offering. I’ve got your measure. But the offer had put her in a difficult position. I can’t hand in my notice now, she thought. Not right this moment anyroad. ’Twould look ill. I shall have to stay here and see it out for a week or two at least. But I’ll make enquiries at t’hiring just to be on t’safe side and I’ll go as soon as ever I can.

Their new master had finished telling them what he intended to do. He was looking at the door, patting his belly in a self-satisfied sort of way, saying, ‘That’ll be all for now.’ But as they began to leave, he added, ‘Follow me to the parlour will you, Mr Timmins,’ and looked at Josh.

‘What’s all that about?’ Mrs Cadwallader said when she and Jane were back in the kitchen. ‘Singling
him
out. I hope he don’t mean to give him more’n the rest of us. Not the way he goes on in that ol’ pantry of his, what I don’t approve of and neither should he.’

Jane didn’t care. She had enough to think about without concerning herself with Josh and his drinking habits. ‘We shall know soon enough,’ she said.

They knew ten minutes later when Josh banged into the kitchen
red-faced
with temper and threw his wig onto the dresser with such force that he knocked over a candlestick.

‘He’s told me to find another job,’ he said. ‘Another job! Did ’ee ever hear the like? It beggars belief. Twenty years I’ve been here, man and boy. Twenty years of faithful service. And now this! He says he don’t need a valet. Don’t need a valet, my eye! I never
seen
a man what needs one more. Well, he won’t get far wi’out one and that’s a certainty. He’s got no taste at all. Not that he gave me the chance to tell him. I couldn’t get a word in edgeways, he kept saying I was
free to seek better employment elsewhere.
You’d ha’ thought he was offering me a favour.’

‘Oh dear,’ Mrs Cadwallader said, righting the candlestick to hide the fact that she was grinning. ‘And here’s me thinking you were going to get some special offer.’

The parlour bell was jangling against the wall. ‘Now what?’ Josh said, as one of the housemaids went to answer it.

It was the mistress, the girl said on her return, ‘a-wantin’ to see you, Mrs Smith, ma’am. Only the thing is …’ she hesitated, ‘the thing is, it looks as if she’s been a-weeping.’

Lizzie Hudson was sitting on one of the dingy old chairs in the parlour window. Her long nose was quite red and her cheeks were blotched and drawn. But the most noticeable thing about her was not her unhappy face but the fact that she was heavily pregnant.

‘Oh!’ she said. ‘It’s Mrs Smith, isn’t it? Yes, of course. What am I thinking of? I know you are. Mr Hudson told me. What I means for to say … the thing is….’ And then she was crying again, the tears running down her long nose. ‘Oh, oh!’ she sobbed. ‘What must you think of me?’

Her distress was too great not to be answered. ‘Is there owt I can do for ’ee, ma’am?’ Jane asked. ‘Do you want for summat? You’ve only to say.’

‘It’s this baby,’ Lizzie grieved, looking down at her belly. ‘I’m so afraid. What if I lose this one as well?’

It was time to be practical. ‘Have you booked a midwife, ma’am?’

Lizzie shook her head, scattering teardrops from the end of her nose. ‘I
don’t know of any,’ she admitted. ‘Not the kindly sort anyroad. Not what I’d call kindly. The one who came when my Richard was born was the hardest sort of woman you ever did see.’ And she whispered, ‘I think she drank.’

‘Would you like me to find one for you?’ Jane offered, thinking of Mother Hardcastle.

There was such relief on Lizzie Hudson’s face it was pitiful to see it. ‘Oh, I would. I would.’

‘I’ll write this very afternoon,’ Jane reassured her, ‘and I’ll ask her to attend on you just as soon as she can. Don’t fret, ma’am. She’s a gossip but she’s allus kindly.’ But even as the words were in her mouth she was thinking how foolish she was being. Now she would have to stay until this was settled, which wasn’t at all what she’d been planning when she walked into the room. But she could hardly turn away from this poor woman and do nothing for her, not when she was in such a state.

She wrote to Mrs Hardcastle as soon as she was back in her parlour and sent the letter by what was now the Hudson dogcart so that she was sure it would be delivered that day. The midwife was equally quick, appearing on the doorstep at Monkgate early the next morning in her best bonnet and shawl. She spent the entire morning with her new mother, talking her through her worries, calming and soothing and finally telling her that her baby would be born safe and well ‘on account of I shall see to it’.

‘Such a relief,’ Lizzie said to Jane that afternoon. ‘I’m so grateful to ’ee, Mrs Smith. You’ve no idea. I was at my wits’ end afore you came along. Right at my very wits’ end. And now … Your Mrs Hardcastle is a splendid woman. Absolutely splendid. But I don’t need to tell ’ee that, do I? First rate and so kindly. She says I’ve got a fine healthy baby and ’twill be born wi’ no problem at all, bein’ the third like. She hasn’t any babies booked for August, so that’s a mercy. I’m to send the carriage for her when I have my first pains and she says she’ll be here within the hour. Oh, you’ve made all the difference to me. All the difference. You truly have. I tell ’ee, when we came here ’twas like the end of t’world, leaving home and the shop and all, but now … I’m so glad you’re our housekeeper. Now I shall have you
and
Mrs Hardcastle when the baby comes. I shall, shan’t I?’

‘Aye,’ Jane said. ‘Of course.’ She knew her promise was tying her feet to the ground but what else could she say?

‘Oh an’ afore I forget,’ Lizzie said. ‘Mr Hudson said to tell ’ee he wants to see thee. In his office, so he said. Anyroad, I think that’s what he said. He’s so full of plans for this house, I can’t keep pace with him. We’re to have a new nursery and I don’t know what-all. He’ll tell ’ee.’

So Jane left her grateful mistress and went off to find her graceless
master. He was sitting at the desk in the office, reading letters. There were several rolled-up plans standing in a long vase at one end of the desk,
obviously
waiting for his attention, and a pot full of sharp quills ready at the other. ‘Aye,’ he said, without looking up. ‘Mrs Smith. I’ll be with ’ee shortly.’

She stood in the sunlight and waited as patiently as she could although her brain was seething. In two days all her sensible plans had been
overturned
and now she was stuck here in a house where she certainly didn’t want to be, with a master she certainly didn’t want to serve. The minute that baby’s born, she thought, I shall be off out of here like a shot.

‘Now then,’ George said, looking up at her. ‘What do ’ee say to the number of servants I’ve got in this house? Is there a sufficiency, d’you think?’

She answered him seriously. ‘It depends on what use you means to mek of the place,’ she said. ‘There are enough of us to run it day to day but if you were thinking of having company or entertaining …’

‘Oh, I shall be entertaining a great deal,’ he told her, ‘so there’ll be a deal of company. I mean to have the house redecorated to a more suitable style for it. So what sort of household would you need to manage all that?’

She gave him a generous estimate which he accepted without argument. ‘See to it,’ he said. ‘Tell ’em they can start on the old wages till I see if they suit.’

Not a word about his wife, Jane thought, as she took the back stairs to the kitchen. And not a word of thanks to me for helping her either. I don’t believe he pays any attention to either of us. He doesn’t see us. It’s just him and what he wants, him entertaining, him having a deal of company, him redecorating the house, what’ll be hard work whichever way you look at it.

She was right, for it wasn’t so much redecorated as stripped bare and redesigned. First all the old furniture was removed. Then the painters and decorators arrived. Within a week, the place was so clean that even Jane couldn’t fault it, a new bed had been installed in the master bedroom, there were bright new curtains at the windows, a new Turkey carpet on the floor and two fine new chairs where the master and mistress could sit at their ease. Then he set about reorganizing the dining room and the drawing room and planning a nursery. He bought sumptuous new furniture for all three rooms, and an expensive bone china dinner service for the dining room, a table big enough to seat eighteen people, a canteen of silver cutlery, linen tablecloths, dozens of napkins. No expense was spared and no detail
overlooked
.