The Travelling Man (27 page)

‘I’ll see to the money side!’ Adam thumped the table with his fist. ‘I’ve told you – there’s all the money you’ll ever need upstairs.’

‘You look like a pitman,’ Annie said, trying to tease him out of his bad mood. ‘I’ll have your tea ready in a minute.’ She lifted the sewing machine.

‘Leave that be!’ Adam thundered. ‘So I look like a pitman, do I? An’ so would you, so would you if you’d been working with the horse-roller since first light.’ He spread his big hands wide. ‘That’s soot from the burnt stubble.’ He pointed to his chin. ‘An’ it’s on my face too, is it?’

A nervous giggle escaped from Annie’s throat. ‘You’ve got a nose as black as the fire-back.’

Because she was half-way to being scared, she could hear herself being childish, and the angrier Adam became the more difficult she found it to wipe the smile off her face. But if only Mr Page would turn round and look in the mirror behind him, he would see for himself how funny he looked. He was baring his teeth now, the large creamy teeth like newly-scrubbed tombstones. The nostrils of his sooty nose were flaring. The angrier he got the more the laughter bubbled up in her.

‘I’m sorry.’ When he gripped her wrist she stopped
laughing
. He was close up to her, so close she could see the way his eyes were bloodshot, red-rimmed with exhaustion. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Page,’ she said again, sobered up now. ‘I wasn’t laughing at you, not really.’ She pulled away from his grasp. ‘I was just so happy I didn’t know what to do with myself. Don’t you see? I haven’t felt this happy in a long, long time.’ She rubbed at her wrist. ‘It must be this dress.’ Her eyes were pleading with him to understand. ‘It’s the first dress I’ve ever had that fits me. Because it’s been made for me. Just me.’ She came to stand in front of him. ‘Don’t be cross, Mr Page. Don’t spoil it all for me.’

He could see the way the blue dress would cling to her shape when the buttons and loops were finished. His heart began to beat with such force he felt she must surely see it. How lovely she was! Into his mind flashed a picture of how she had looked on the day he had found her, skirts caked with mud, her hair clinging black wet to her head, so that he saw the glorious colour of it only when it dried by the fire. She looked so much older now. The touching vulnerability of her had quite gone. He wasn’t surprised that the master’s wife had been so taken with her. Annie Clancy was no ordinary lass. She was dead set on making something of herself, and one day she would go away. She would stay with him out of gratitude for a while, but one day she would just open the door and walk out. He bowed his head, the very thought of it nigh on killing him.

‘You’ve been very good to me,’ she was saying. ‘I’m not likely to forget it.’

Adam muttered from the hurt deep inside him. ‘Oh, aye? Bread eaten’s soon forgotten.’

She shook her head at him. ‘You’re wrong. You took me in when I might have died of cold out there. I can’t ever repay that sort of kindness.’

‘An’ you’ll forget about working at the house?’

‘No!’ Annie hoped he wouldn’t realise how scared she was, but she knew she had to stand her ground. ‘I’m
not
ungrateful to you. I’m not. You must know that. But I paid you back in kind, Mr Page. I looked after Mrs Page and I kept house for you. Since she died there isn’t enough for me to do. I can’t sit doing nothing. I wasn’t brought up to it.’

‘You’re not going up there to work, and that’s that.’

‘You don’t own me, Mr Page.’ The angry spots of colour on her cheeks were as scarlet as the trailing length of velvet ribbon. ‘I don’t belong to anyone. I accepted the position Mrs Gray offered me and I start the day after tomorrow.’

Suddenly the temper Adam never believed he possessed took over. Terror at losing her brought him up out of his chair, sending it skidding across the floor.

‘I tell you you’re not going!’

As he raised his fist, Annie stepped back, blue eyes daring him to touch her. ‘You hit me, an’ I’ll walk right out of the door. Now! Just as I am. There’s nobody ever going to hit me again. Now move away! Get back!’

She hesitated when he crumpled into his chair, his face so contorted it was almost unrecognisable. For a terrified moment she thought he was going to die on her, to drop down on the floor from a seizure brought on by his blazing fury.

‘You ought not to have raised your hand to me.’ She was shocked at the sudden way he seemed to have shrunk into himself. ‘Mr Page! Are you all right?’

‘Can’t you call me Adam? Even yet? I wouldn’t have struck you, lass. I’d rather cut off this arm than strike you. You must know that.’

His head was down, his soil-ingrained hands loose between his knees. The thick brown hair was thinning on top, showing a round and balding spot. Her father had one, just the same, she remembered. You couldn’t see that one either till he’d bowed his head. She said the gardener’s name with difficulty.

‘Adam. Listen to me. I’ll stay here and housekeep for you. I’ll look after you till you feel able to stand on your
own
two feet. You’ve not got over Mrs Page dying yet; you’re all mixed up in your mind.’ She stretched out a hand to touch him, thought better of it and drew it back. ‘I’m going to work up at the house in the afternoons. You’ll not change my mind. You getting so angry about it showed me how right I am.’ She risked coming round his chair to stand before him. ‘I don’t belong to nobody, Adam. I don’t think I ever will. What I have to do, I have to do by myself. Can’t you even begin to see that?’

But he couldn’t, and upstairs in her room Annie took off the blue dress. If she worked on it till late and again tomorrow she could finish it in time to wear on her first day at the big house. She would rather die, she told herself, than go in one of Clara’s hand-me-downs in a drab colour that didn’t suit, fitting only where it touched.

She stroked the fine material, being careful not to snag a thread on her work-roughened fingers. Perhaps if she soaked her hands in a solution of soft green soap they would look better, more presentable, fit to be seen up at the big house.

She laid the dress carefully on the bed. It was so beautiful she couldn’t stop smiling even just looking at it. Dress like a tramp and folks treated you like one; wear another woman’s ancient cast-offs and get regarded like a nobody. The smile spread right across her face. But dress like a lady and what a difference that made. Mrs Gray had been really impressed by the dress. It was probably the dress that had brought on the offer of a job, Annie felt sure of it.

She took the candle from the chest-of-drawers, held it high to admire it once more, before she went downstairs to make the tea. It wasn’t just luck that Mrs Gray had called and seen her looking refined and ladylike. It had been meant to be. Her mother had always said that when things happened unexpectedly – good or bad – they were meant to be. It looked as if her luck was in at last. An’the look on her
face
when she’d seen the dress! Annie would never forget that.

Up at the house there were only two of them for dinner that evening. Abigail and Dorothea had gone to a Hunt Ball dressed, Margot thought, like a couple of pantomime dames.

She was wearing her cinnamon-brown taffeta dress, cut high at the neck to hide a faintly wrinkled cleavage.

‘I saw the gardener’s girl this afternoon,’ she said, when the parlour maid had gone back to the kitchen after serving the lamb roast. ‘I’ve taken her on to work here in the afternoons.’

‘Doing what, for God’s sake?’ Harry had already drunk far too much. From now on he would laugh at every word he uttered, finishing each sentence with a loud guffaw. ‘You can’t turn round in this blasted house without tripping over a wretched girl down on her knees scrubbing the tiles in the hall or polishing the blasted stair-rods.’ He laughed till his eyes watered. ‘You can’t clear your throat these days without one of the blighters jumping to attention. I put me boots down t’other day and one of the interfering blaggards whisked them away for a polishing they didn’t need. Chap with black shiny hair that reminded me of a pontefract cake.’

This last witticism almost had him under the table. His pleasant face was the colour of a boiled beetroot; he beamed with the pleasure of his own conversation.

Margot looked upon him with a kind of love, an affection that saw and accepted her husband for what he was, a big blustering man who shouted and cursed his way through each day, huffing and puffing, just for the hell of it. She passed over a dish of sprouts. ‘I’ve engaged her as a seamstress. You won’t set eyes on her unless you go upstairs to the sewing-room.’ She lowered her voice as the parlour maid came and went with a dish of mint sauce. ‘Guess where she was living before Adam found her wandering the roads?’

Harry leaned over and speared an extra roast potato. ‘Surprise me,’ he grinned, deciding to finish the whole dish.

‘With Seth Armstrong,’ Margot said. ‘Not with him in that sense.’

‘In
what
sense?’ Harry wanted to know, trying to keep his face straight.

‘Well, you know. Not as lovers.’

‘Pity.’ Harry pierced a piece of meat on his fork. ‘If ever a man needed a woman’s touch that man is Seth Armstrong. There’s a sadness so deep in him it hurts to look at him at times.’ He forgot to laugh.

‘Harry!’ Margot got up from her chair, walked round the table and planted a kiss on her husband’s cheek. ‘You’re an old softie,’ she whispered. ‘Fancy you noticing a thing like that.’

Margot went back to her place. ‘Adam’s girl had made a dress for herself that wouldn’t have looked out of place at a musical soirée. Where she’s going to wear it, God only knows.’

ANNIE FINISHED THE
dress in time. The bow at the back still didn’t satisfy her, but she reassured herself that it was her front that mattered. At least there wasn’t much wrong with the bodice with its tucks and covered buttons. She had pulled her hair up high on top of her head and the added height made her feel almost regal. She was glad the weather was fine. Rain would have frizzed her hair and muddied her boots, though Adam said it was much needed. The soil was dry and cracked for want of moisture, he grumbled.

He had been very quiet since Annie had showed him she wasn’t going to stand for being bullied, but there was a quiet frenzy about him as though he could explode at any moment. He stared at her; his eyes followed her round the room; when she asked him to tell her more about the big house he sulked and said if she wanted to know its history she’d best ask her friend Mrs Gray, not him.

The winding drive seemed to go on for ever. Annie held her skirts well away from the dust. When she reached the house she saw two cock pheasants walking proudly across the lawns, and the sight brought tears of admiration to her eyes. Such splendour, such beauty – it was all too much to take in. Round the side of the house she saw tortoise-shell butterflies hovering over a bed of michaelmas daisies and actually clasped her hands together. Somebody ought to write a poem about it all, she decided, going right round to the back, as Adam had told her she must.

The girl who showed her up the back stairs to the sewing-room had a face on her that looked as if a smile would crack it. Annie beamed at her.

‘What’s your name? Mine’s Annie Clancy.’

‘Johnson.’

‘No, I mean your
first
name.’

Nothing could wipe the smile off Annie’s face. Certainly not this sulky girl with the slight cast in one eye. She wasn’t to know that Annie could just as easily have been starting a thankless job, like picking coal over on the long belt at the mine, or standing at clacking looms in a noisy weaving shed, or washing other people’s clothes. While here she was, wearing a dress that fitted, landing a job entailing nothing more than sitting on a chair and sewing.

Johnson’s mouth curved into a sneer. ‘Parlour maids are always called by their surnames. You don’t know much, do you?’

‘Nothing at all about working in a house like this.’
Annie
unfastened Clara’s old cloak and took it off. ‘How many rooms are there? Are they all furnished?’

Johnson’s expression changed to one of stunned amazement. She backed away to the door, a hand held to her mouth. Annie heard her giggling with someone out on the landing.

‘Pop your head in there and have a look at the gardener’s girl. She’s dressed up like a dog’s dinner in a dress that shiny you can see your face in it. Wait till Kit sees her. He’ll ask her for the last waltz!’

A tousled head appeared round the door, stared in disbelief, then disappeared, closing the door against the sound of hysterical laughter.

Annie looked down at the dress, the brightness fading from her face. Was it really as shiny as all that? And the colour? She frowned. To be honest, when she got it back to the cottage she had worried for a brief moment about the vivid shade of blue. She fingered the uneven bow at the back. Johnson hadn’t seen that yet – she’d probably split her sides when she did.

Annie walked over to the window and stared down into the stable yard. Knowing too late that she should have worn one of Clara Page’s drab cast-offs, in black or grey. Knowing she’d made a terrible mistake. A tear trickled slowly down her cheek, then another. She had wanted so much to look her best. This wasn’t any old dress. She had dreamed of wearing one like this ever since she’d grown a bust and was old enough to care what she looked like. Her father had beaten her almost senseless for wanting to make a dress like this.

She dashed the tears away with the back of a hand. This dress was a symbol of the way things were going to be from now on. That’s what it was, a symbol of how she felt inside, of how she knew she could be, given the chance. Annie perked up. Johnson wasn’t going to spoil this day for her. Nothing could do that. Johnson was jealous. That was the truth. Not worth wasting good worrying time on.

Annie stood in the middle of the room looking round her. The carpet with its red and blue medallions must have cost a pretty penny, and there wasn’t a worn patch in it. There were gilt-framed pictures on the walls and a long mirror fixed to the alcove at the side of the marble fireplace; there was a glowing fire in the basket-grate. The large work table was the only shabby piece of furniture in the room, and Annie bet she could have brought that up like new with a linseed rag.