The Ragged Heiress (17 page)

Lucetta scraped her plate in order to spoon up the last of the gravy. She resisted the temptation to lick it clean, and she rose a little unsteadily to add it to the pile of dirty crockery. She felt better already, and she was able to look round the kitchen without feeling dizzy, but
what she saw filled her with dismay. The ceiling was blackened with soot and grease and the roughly plastered walls were scabbed yellow where the whitewash had peeled off in huge flakes. Strings of onions and dried herbs hung from the beams and a couple of hams dangled in the ingle nook above the range, their skins glistening with salt as the smoke from the fire cured the blackened flesh. What should have been a sight that would gladden the heart of any cook was spoilt by the clouds of bluebottles buzzing around the meat, and the spiders’ webs which festooned the herbs and onions, some of which looked shrivelled like prunes and gave off a distinctly unpleasant odour.

It was stiflingly hot in the room and the one small window which overlooked the back yard remained firmly closed. A door on the far side led into what looked like a scullery. Lucetta could just make out a clay sink and a wooden draining board cluttered with pots and pans. Dirty crockery was piled on the floor and small grey mice were busily feasting off the congealed grease.

It was obvious that Peg needed all the help she could get, and Lucetta rolled up her sleeves. She had never washed a dish in her life, but it couldn’t be that difficult. Without disturbing Peg, who was busy with the food orders, she picked her way carefully over the greasy flagstones and mice scattered in all directions as she entered the scullery. If the kitchen was grubby and untidy, the scullery was a filthy mess. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling like fishermen’s nets put out to dry, and the cracked windowpanes were opaque with dirt. Flies buzzed around her head and the sink was
green with slime. The smell rising from the drain was evil enough to fell an ox, and Lucetta thought for a moment that she was going to be sick. She opened the door that led into the yard and gulped in a lungful of the city air. It was not country fresh but anything was better than the rank odour in the scullery.

She looked around for a bucket and found one outside the back door. Taking it into the kitchen, she filled it with hot water from one of the boilers on either side of the range. Peg was too occupied to pay her any attention and Lucetta staggered back to the scullery to fill the sink. The green slime waved at her like water-weed in the river that had once flowed outside the Wilkinsons’ home in Duncan Terrace, but there did not appear to be anything to help cleanse the dishes other than soda crystals and a crock filled with sand on one of the shelves. As a small child, Lucetta had sometimes ventured into the kitchens of Thornhill Crescent where Cook had been a kindly soul and had allowed her to sample jam tarts or a slice of seed cake still warm from the oven. She had watched the scullery maid pouring Hudson’s extract of dry soap into hot water when she washed the dishes from breakfast or luncheon, but on finding no similar product to this, she threw a handful of soda crystals into the water and hoped for the best.

Within minutes her hands were red and wrinkled but she was determined to repay Peg’s generosity, and she continued to wash the crockery, piling it on the draining board and leaving it to dry in the humid air.

‘Well now, you’ve done a better job than Poppy and that’s for sure.’

Lucetta had not heard Peg come into the scullery and she almost dropped a plate as she turned with a start. ‘I wanted to repay your kindness, Mrs er …’

‘It’s Potts,’ Peg said, grinning. ‘But everyone calls me Peg. Anyway, you done enough for now, ducks. It’s gone quiet in the bar and I’ve sold out of pies and sausages. We’ll have that cup of tea I promised you a good half-hour since.’

The water in the sink was tepid and thick with grease, and Lucetta’s back was aching. She was only too glad to follow Peg into the kitchen.

‘Take the weight off your feet, ducks,’ Peg said, pouring tea into two china cups. ‘You’ve paid for your dinner, so what are you going to do now? Have you got lodgings nearby?’

Lucetta accepted the cup of tea and sank down gratefully on the wooden settle. ‘No. I’ve nowhere to go and no money now.’

Peg lowered herself onto a chair at the table. ‘Ain’t you got no family?’

‘I’m an orphan,’ Lucetta said truthfully, and her eyes filled with tears. Until this moment she had been too intent on survival to dwell on her loss, but now the realisation that she would never see her parents again hit her forcibly. She bowed her head, to hide the tears that flowed freely down her cheeks. ‘And I have no relations living in London,’ she whispered. ‘I must find work.’

Peg cleared her throat noisily. ‘Well, love, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but you won’t get a job anywhere looking like something the cat’s dragged in. I seen better dressed scarecrows than you.’

Lucetta wiped her eyes on her sleeve, sniffing. ‘I know, but I’ve nothing else to wear. I’ve lost everything.’

‘But the family you worked for,’ Peg said, frowning thoughtfully. ‘Where was they from? Did they have a house in London? If they was rich enough to employ a lady’s maid, they must have had other servants who would vouch for you.’

Lucetta choked on a mouthful of tea. ‘I went to the house, but the master’s brother and his wife live there now. They sent me away and told me not to bother them again.’ She shot a sideways glance at Peg, wondering if she would swallow such an unlikely story.

‘That’s the way of the world,’ Peg said, nodding sagely. ‘There’s one rule for the toffs and another for the likes of us. Tell you what, love. You can stay on here and help in the kitchen until Poppy gets out of hospital. I’ll pay you in food and you can have her cot in the attic for nuppence a week. How does that sound to you?’

Lucetta glanced down at the grime-encrusted flagstones and the small mounds of vegetable peelings left to moulder away under the deal table. It would take a Herculean effort to create a semblance of cleanliness and order in this chaotic kitchen, but Peg was kindly and she was a good cook. A cot in the attic was preferable to sleeping in a shop doorway, and Stranks would never find her here. She looked up and met Peg’s enquiring gaze with a smile. ‘It’s a fair offer, and I’ll do my best.’

‘That’s settled then.’ Peg refilled her cup with tea. ‘You can make a start by peeling them spuds.’ She pointed to a bulging sack under the window.

‘All of them?’ Lucetta said faintly.

Peg chuckled. ‘Not unless you’re expecting an army to come for their supper. You start peeling and I’ll tell you when to stop.’ She put her feet up on a stool. ‘When you’ve done that you can chop up the beefsteak for the pies. Anyone can do that but it takes a proper cook to make pastry as light as mine.’

By the end of the day Lucetta was so exhausted that she could hardly put one foot in front of the other as she climbed the narrow staircase to the attic. The flickering pool of light from Peg’s candle bobbed unsteadily ahead of her and the flame was almost extinguished by the draught from the open door.

‘There’s your bed,’ Peg said, pointing to a narrow wooden cot set against the wall. ‘You’ll sleep without rocking tonight, girl, but I expect you up at six to clean the grate in the bar and get the fire going in the range. If you was a kitchen maid in one of them big houses you’d be up at five, so think yourself lucky. Sleep well.’ She left the room, closing the door behind her.

Lucetta blinked as her eyes grew accustomed to the dim light filtering in through a small roof window. There was head height in the middle of the room only and she had to duck under the rafters in order to reach the bed. The bare boards creaked beneath her feet and she had no idea what lurked in the dark corners, but she was too tired to care and she fell, fully dressed, onto the lumpy mattress. Every bone in her body ached and her hands were chapped and raw. She felt the
blisters bursting on her fingers as she pulled off her boots, but at least her stomach was full. Peg might be a hard taskmaster but she was generous with food, insisting that a person could not be expected to work on an empty belly. It was past midnight but the sounds of carousing from the bar filtered up two storeys to the attic, and there seemed to be a brawl going on in the street outside. Hysterical screams and shouts were accompanied by the scrape of hobnails striking the cobblestones, and the grunts of opponents as fists came into contact with soft flesh. Lucetta closed her eyes. At least she was safe up here beneath the eaves. She hoped that the illness which had laid poor Poppy so low was not catching, but she was really too tired to care very much. Despite everything, she drifted off to sleep.

She was lying with Sam beneath a champak tree in the consulate compound. The scent of the blossoms crushed beneath their warm bodies would linger in her memory forever. The soft touch of his hands on her bare flesh sent the blood racing through her veins and the taste of his mouth was achingly familiar. She could hear his voice whispering words of love in her ear, and she was in heaven.

‘Get up, you lazy little trollop.’

Wrenched cruelly from her sweet dream, Lucetta opened her eyes to see Bob Potts towering over her. He tore the coverlet from the bed, staring down at her with an angry curl of his lips. ‘You was hired to work not to laze about all day.’ His dark eyes raked her bare legs where her skirt had ridden up past her knees.

The expression on his face both startled and alarmed her and she sat up in bed, cracking her head on a rafter.

‘Bob!’ Peg’s voice cracked like a whip from the doorway.

He backed away from the bed, dropping the coverlet on the bare floorboards. ‘I was just telling her to get her idle body out of bed, ducks.’

‘I’ll deal with her,’ Peg said coldly. ‘Your breakfast’s on the table in the taproom. Cold beef and beer. I’ll deal with our little princess.’

Bob shrugged his wide shoulders and shuffled past his wife without looking at her. His footsteps echoed on the wooden treads as he descended the steep stairs.

‘I’m sorry,’ Lucetta said, swinging her legs over the side of the low bed and reaching for her boots. ‘I didn’t mean to oversleep.’

‘I’ll let you off this once, being as how it’s your first day, but you’d best be up and about afore my husband. He’s got a mean temper when it’s roused.’

Lucetta pushed her feet into the ill-fitting boots that Guthrie had bought for her in a dolly shop. ‘I’m ready.’

Peg eyed her dispassionately. ‘You look a mess, girl.’ She jerked her head in the direction of a boxwood chest, the only other piece of furniture in the room. ‘There’s some of Poppy’s duds in there. She’s about your size.’

‘Are you sure she won’t mind?’

‘Lor-a-mussy, girl. She ain’t in no position to care one way or the other. I ain’t telling you a second time. Change into something half decent and put your hair in a mobcap. We’ll see about cleaning you up later, but it’ll be the pump outside in the yard for you and a bar
of carbolic soap when the morning rush is over.’ Having made this pronouncement and leaving no doubt in Lucetta’s mind that she meant business, Peg swept out of the room to follow her husband downstairs.

Lucetta eyed the chest doubtfully. It didn’t seem right to take poor Poppy’s clothes when her life hung in the balance, but it would be wonderful to feel clean linen next to her skin. She had to bend almost double to open the lid of the chest and she knelt on the floor to examine the contents, which were pitifully few. The smell of camphor was almost overpowering, but at least it seemed to have kept the moths at bay. She pulled out a coarse woollen skirt which was obviously Poppy’s winter wear, together with a calico blouse in an indeterminate shade of grey. There was a clean although much-darned shift and, at the very bottom of the chest, a faded cotton-print dress and a white mobcap.

‘Don’t take all day about it,’ Peg shouted from the bottom of the stairs. ‘There’s work to be done.’

Making as much haste as she could when hampered by sore fingers that fumbled painfully with buttons and laces, Lucetta donned Poppy’s clothes. The garments fitted well enough although the faded print gown barely reached her ankles, but it would have to do. She made her way down to the kitchen.

‘That’s better,’ Peg said, thrusting a besom into her hands. ‘Now you look like a workhouse girl and we won’t have no trouble from the customers taking liberties with you. You have to watch out for men when they’ve had too much to drink. When you take food into the bar, keep your eyes down and your trap shut.’

Lucetta stared at her in horror. What if by some unhappy chance Stranks or Guthrie should choose to drink at the Frog Inn? ‘But I thought I was just working in the kitchen. You didn’t say anything about going into the bar.’

‘You’ll do what you’re told, Lucy Cutler. You ain’t no lady’s maid now. I can put you out on the street as soon as look at you and don’t you forget it. Now sweep the floor like a good girl, and then you shall have some breakfast.’

All morning, Lucetta worked harder than she could have imagined possible. She swept and mopped the floors in the taproom as well as the kitchen and scullery. She prepared vegetables, washed dishes and hefted hods filled with fuel from the coal shed to the fire in the bar and the kitchen range, which seemed to need feeding every half-hour like an insatiable ravening monster. She scuttled in and out of the taproom, doing as Peg said and keeping her head down, but whether it was by accident or simply due to the confined space behind the bar she was uncomfortably aware that Bob brushed against her every time she attempted to get past him. Sometimes his hand strayed to touch her behind, although he withdrew it so quickly that she couldn’t be certain whether or not it was deliberate. By the end of the midday rush, she was beginning to think that she had more to fear from the landlord of the Frog Inn than from the punters.

Having served the last customer with a meat pie and mash, Lucetta was allowed to sit down at the kitchen
table with Peg and they finished up what was left of the food they had prepared that morning. Bob had taken his meal in the empty taproom and had gone out on business of his own, leaving Peg and the ancient potman, Charlie, to deal with any customer who might wander in on a quiet summer’s afternoon.