The Observations Read online

  ‘All done,’ she says, making a final note on her piece of paper.

  ‘Please marm,’ I says. ‘What is—’

  She waved a hand in the direction of a pot of porridge. ‘It’s over there,’ she says. ‘And after breakfast perhaps you would like to collect the hens eggs. There’s a basket in the corner. By the way, where exactly did you say your master lived?’

  ‘Hyndland, marm, Crown House,’ I says and then I could have bit my tongue off since I hadn’t tellt her exactly where he lived at all and only blurted it out because I was still perplexed about her measuring my face.

  ‘Crown House,’ she says, making a note.

  ‘But of course,’ I says quick, ‘you can’t write to him for my character because he’s dead and the house is closed up,’ and then I added, ‘Unfortunately.’

  She give me a hard look. ‘Is it unfortunate that he is dead? Or that I can’t write to him for a character?’

  ‘Well—both, marm,’ I says. ‘But please marm. Excuse me but what for do you need all them measurements for?’

  She smiled at me. ‘What is your frock made of?’ she says.

  ‘Silk, marm.’

  ‘Yes and what colour is it?’

  I looked down at it. Then I says, ‘It’s red, marm.’

  ‘And tell me, do you have any other dresses apart from this garment and the—thing you were wearing yesterday?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘I thought as much,’ she says. ‘Then you will need clothes will you not? Nothing you have is suitable.’

  ‘Yes marm, of course,’ I says. ‘But what I mean is—the other measurements. ’

  She looked at me blankly. ‘What other measurements?’ she says, and then she turned her back on me and hurried out the room with her piece of paper.

  Perhaps she intended to draw my portrait and wanted to get the proportions right or what have you. As I was stood there thinking, the missus climbed the stairs to her room. I wondered what she would do in there, all alone. There was the faint sound of a door closing and then silence except for in the distance the mournful hooting of a train and closer by my stomach grumbling with hunger.

  I turned to pick up the porridge pot and as I did so happened to glance at the grate. I seen at once that the hearth had been swep clean and washed and that the ½ burnt book had disappeared altogether.

  Before I collected the eggs, I had a quick skelly around the place. On one side of the house was the stables, on the other the vegetable gardens. Up the lane was the farm and byre where I’d been yesterday. The mansion itself must have been there donkeys years, the sandstone walls were dirty grey with age. For the most part it was two storeys high, with a few single storey wings built on. The chimneys were tall and from the layout of the roofs it looked as though there was a couple of other attics as well as the one that contained my little room. Here and there, the gables was notched to make them look like battlements. I dare say once upon a time it must have been grand enough but now everything looked run down. The window glass was cracked in several places, the paintwork was peeling and blistered and all the paths choked with weeds. Not that I knew much about it but either there wasn’t enough money to maintain the place or they didn’t keep enough staff.

  Part of me was glad of the extra sleep I’d been allowed but funny enough I had an urge to throw myself into something, the dirtier and more difficult the task she give me the better. So I took a basket and went out to the hen run. Jesus Murphy you wouldn’t think a few hens could stink so bad. The only way to do it was to go round with your breath held. Some of the eggs had hen skitters on them too, it near made me boke. But I got nine without breaking any then crawled out the run backwards gasping for breath. When I turned round who was stood in the yard staring at me with a big grin on his phizog and his hands in his pockets but the Highland Jocky from the day before. I near enough jumped out my skin.

  ‘What the flip are you doing there?’ I shouts at him. ‘Are you flipping following me?’

  I must explain that my language was only rough because he had put the heart across in me appearing out of nowhere and besides I was none too pleased to see him, he was a pest, not yet 16 year old but a more lecherous devil never put an arm in a coat.

  ‘Keech,’ he says, that being a foul word in his own language. ‘Could hi not be hasking you the same?’

  ‘Flip off and die,’ I says. ‘You great lump.’

  ‘Hi’ll giff you a lump,’ he says with a grin then he put his hands on his hips so his fingers pointed to where his jack was pushing at his trousers, it was up and angry. Then he says, ‘Fwhy don’t you and me go hover to that barn hand lie down thegether like man and fwhife?’

  He took a step forwards so I lobbed an egg, it caught him on the jaw and dripped down a yolky beard onto his scarf and waistcoat. It was so comical I could not help but chuckle. The boy swep his hand across his chin and wiped the mess on his trouser leg. Then he grinned like a madman and stepped towards me again. I was about to throw another egg when I seen the missus come hurrying towards us so instead I says to the boy, ‘Now you are in for it when your woman sees you trespassing on her land.’

  He glanced over his shoulder to see who was coming then slipped his hands in his pockets and stood there whistling and looking about him, for dear sake butter wouldn’t melt.

  ‘Missus,’ I says. ‘I mean marm. This boy is bothering me. He’s followed me here and he’s nought but a pest.’

  The missus looked at the boy. ‘Is this true, Hector?’ she says.

  Hector?

  He give me a sly wink very pleased with himself so he was, the scut. Then he turned to the missus. ‘Ach no, Mrs Reid,’ he says. ‘Not a tall. Hi fwhas chust hasking this brazen creature fwhat she fwas doing stealing your heggs—hand then she threw fwhun at me!’

  He adopted a face of such innocence you would have swore he was a saint. Well I was fit to be tied. ‘Liar!’ I says and would have went on but missus interrupted me.

  ‘Hector, this is Bessy,’ she says. ‘The new maid.’

  ‘Och is that right now?’ His eyes widened but he was not really surprised, I could tell a faker a mile off. ‘A new maid?’ he says. ‘Fwhell, fwhell.’ And he looks me up and down like I was a cow at auction.

  ‘This is Hector,’ says the missus to me. ‘He helps us out on the estate. He’s around here all the time for one reason or another.’

  Needless to say I was not best pleased at this news. I looked him up and down like he was a big long streak of what you might find in a thunder mug of a morning.

  ‘How is your tooth, Hector?’ the missus asks him.

  ‘Fwait till you see the hole,’ he says and he stuck his dirty great finger in his mouth to pull back his lip just as he’d kept doing the day before. Missus hid her eyes behind her hand and who could blame her.

  ‘I have no desire to see it,’ she says. ‘All I want to know is whether it was a successful operation.’

  The boy plucked his finger from his mouth and wiped it on his sleeve.

  ‘Hit fwas hindeed, marm,’ he says. ‘Hit came hout fwhith a great wrench, the sound hof it fwhas chust like huprooting potatoes.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ she says and made a face. ‘Well you must get back to work.’

  The boy give her a little bow and then give me a deeper satirical one and with another sly wink he was off and running out the yard, I don’t know about uprooting potatoes but you could certainly have grown them between his toes.

  The missus turned to me. ‘Was he bothering you?’ she says.

  ‘Only somewhat, marm,’ I says. ‘Nothing I can’t deal with by myself.’

  ‘Good for you,’ she says. ‘But do try and do it without throwing eggs.’ She smiled at me. ‘That was a pretty song you were singing earlier. I don’t think I heard it before.’

  ‘No, marm,’ I says. ‘It’s one I made up in my own head.’

  ‘Indeed?’ she says. ‘You are clever.’ And then she reached out quickly and stroked my cheek
. ‘What are you thinking of, Bessy?’ she says.

  ‘Marm? Nothing marm. I wasn’t thinking anything.’

  In actual fact I was thinking how given ½ a chance I could split that Hectors head like a pea shod. But I didn’t want to say that in case she thought wrong of me.

  ‘I’m sure that’s not the case,’ says the missus. ‘We are always thinking something, every one of us. Never mind. How many eggs did you get?’

  ‘9—well—8,’ I says.

  ‘Good girl.’ She smiled at me most kind, then turned and went back into the house. I watched her go.

  What are you thinking of? What a thing to say. In my entire life, nobody had ever asked me such a question.

  For the rest of the morning she showed me some of the things I had to do about the place then after lunch she sent me down to Snatter to buy scones. Snatter was the nearest village there, which to begin with made me laugh every time I heard it talked about for it sounded like a thing that came shooting out your nose. When it was time to go missus took me down behind the vegetable garden and pointed out the quickest way, down a track in a field called Cowburnhill and then along the lane to where the village lay at the crossroads with the Great Road.

  ‘Don’t be long,’ she says to me. ‘I need those scones this afternoon. Just get them and come straight back.’

  ‘Yes yes,’ I says to her. ‘For dear sake woman don’t fuss like a great lilty.’

  No I didn’t really. I just says, ‘Certainly marm,’ and took the pennies she give me. Then I made her a nice curtsey and off I went. She had been so lovely to me all morning, I had almost forgot how strange she had acted the night before.

  Cowburnhill, I was not happy about Cowburnhill at all, there was cowpats up to your wishbone but luckily that day the cows themselves was all in the next field. The sky was the colour of the stirabout I had ate for breakfast but there was no wind and it wasn’t too cold. As I walked along, I sang out loud the song I was making up, but it wasn’t finished yet, I only had two verse and a chorus.

  After a while the lane passed a small field in the middle of which was a man bent over looking at the soil. I stopped singing as soon as I seen him, I had no wish to draw attention to myself. But as I went past he straightened up and stared at me. He was short and slightly built and he spat constantly. I was later to learn that this was Biscuit Meek, one of the farm servants. By the outraged expression on his face and the way his hands clenched up into fists you would have thought I was old Nabs himself taking a dander down the lane. I give him a wave and a good afternoon, seeing as he might be my new neighbour. In response he hawked up a great oyster and gobbed it on the earth but by the looks of him that was only his next spit among what might be thousands that day so it would be unfair to say it was directed at me with malice.

  Thank flip the lane soon took a curve and sloped down the hill behind a hedge. It was a relief to get out his sight. Before too long, I came into the village. In those days, before the new pits opened, it was a smaller place than now, inhabited mainly by miners and weavers, their dwellings clustered around the Cross and straggling for some distance along either side of the Great Road. I looked about me for a coffee house or other place of entertainment but was to be sore disappointed. Granted, there was a tavern at one end of the village called The Gushet and a small hotel just up the road from the Cross—the Swan Inn. But apart from that the only points of interest were an old smithy and the one shop that served as baker, grocer and post office combined. There was about ½ a dozen dirty children playing in the street, two mangy dogs and a few horses and carts and pony traps sitting here and there. Not even a theatre or a dance hall for a hooley, the only hall had a big sign up that showed it was reserved for the masonics, The Free Gardeners. I was most deflated. I seen in the shop window that there was a Soiree advertised but on closer inspection this proved to have taken place the previous month in another village called Smoller. Even though I could have murdered a few jars, I walked past both the tavern and the hotel without going in. My first day on the job it would be a disaster to roll up in a state of elevation. Besides, I had no wish to displease the missus, she had give me a fair start.

  Inside the shop smelled of sweeties and tobacco and milk gone off and it was empty except for a bald-pated man behind the counter this was AP Henderson the grocer. What did he do when I give him good afternoon but fold his arms across his watch chain and stare up at the rafters, yawning. I had met his type before and knew just to ignore any snash, I got straight to the point.

  ‘Have you any scones there, mister?’ I says and just then I seen them in a glass case on the counter but before I could ask for them Henderson shook his head.

  ‘No,’ says he. ‘Nae scones.’

  I looked at him astounded then pointed at the case. ‘What about those there?’

  ‘These are reserved,’ he says.

  ‘Reserved?’ I says. ‘Reserved for who?’

  ‘For the people of Snatter and this burgh.’

  ‘Well in that case,’ I says, ‘you can give me 6 because I am bid to buy them for my mistress at Castle Haivers which I assume is in this burgh since it’s only a mile or thereabouts up the road.’

  This give him pause for thought. He examined me down the length of his nose. ‘And who might you be?’ he says eventually.

  ‘I am the new maid at Castle Haivers,’ I says. ‘Engaged yesterday.’

  At that he give a little sneering laugh. ‘The new maid,’ he says. ‘Oh aye. And whit happened to the last one?’

  I did not want to admit that I didn’t know so I just says, ‘She left.’

  ‘Oh she did, did she?’ he says then he says (and I thought this most strange), ‘Did she go on the train?’ and he started hooting with laughter. Hooting, so he was. I just stood there while he ruptured himself. It wasn’t even funny, I thought he must be wanting. After several minutes he calmed down and wiped his eyes. ‘Ah dearie me,’ he says. ‘Did she go on the train, Oh boy.’ Then he leans over the counter and says confidentially, ‘And how is the lovely Arabella?’

  ‘Who?’ I says, very haughty.

  ‘Mrs Reid, your mistress,’ he says. ‘Or do you not even ken her name?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I says. ‘Arabella. I didn’t hear you properly. She is very well thank you.’

  ‘And what about himself?’

  I guessed that by this he meant the master so I says, ‘Himself is not at home just at the present moment.’

  ‘Aye-aye,’ says Henderson. ‘Drumming up votes no doubt?’

  ‘No doubt,’ I says, of course not a clue what he was on about.

  ‘Aye-aye?’ he says again and raised an eyebrow. ‘She’s up there all on her own is she? Rattling aboot in that big hoose. She’s probably in need of a bit company, eh?’

  He licked the ends of his moustache hairs, no doubt who he was imagining in the role of companion. The very idea of him going anywhere near the missus filled me with revulsion.

  ‘Not at all,’ I says. ‘Her house is full of guests.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yes, we have several people staying. Relatives of the missus, up from England. That is why we are needing more food, they have ate us out of house and home. Now if you please I’ll just take 6 scones and be on my way. I’m expected.’

  Well you could not have asked him for anything more troublesome, the way he sighed and dragged himself off his stool all the time shaking his head as if it was beyond him why anyone would want to buy scones, it was a desperate performance. Eventually he got the 6 scones in a bag and I laid out the money for him. He flicked it off the counter and caught it in his apron before throwing it in the till. The coins barely touched his lily-white mitts, make no mistake he did not wish to catch the germs off an Irish girl.

  Arabella.

  Arabella, Arabella, it was a lovely name. All the way up the road I kept thinking about a placard I had seen once outside the Theatre Royal with a picture of a ballerina on it, she had on a tremendous pale pink frock tha
t stuck out all round and her skin was like milk, I don’t know why, but that is what the sound of Arabella made me think of, something fine and delicate and beautiful.

  Unlike Biscuit Meek. I was glad to see that he was no longer in the turnip field, no doubt he had went off to spit on somebody elses land. When I got back to Castle Haivers, my missus was in the kitchen.

  ‘You came back!’ she says delighted, perhaps she’d expected me to make off with her tuppence. I give her the scones and straight away she showed me a pile of clothes that she had laid out for me on the table, there was aprons, petticoats, caps and two print cotton frocks, one striped, one dark grey both a little faded. I knew at once they was not new for she could not have got new clothes so quick. And being young and very particular about my appearance I was a bit disappointed at the thought of wearing cast-offs. Missus must have seen the look on my face.

  ‘I think they will be about the right size, don’t you?’ she says and then, ‘They are only temporary until we can get some made up.’

  I picked up the striped frock and examined it. At least it seemed clean and it smelled like it had just been pressed.

  ‘Put it on,’ says the missus.

  ‘Should I change here, marm?’

  ‘Why not?’ she says.