Without a Mother's Love (2 page)

‘No, ma’am. I am here to look after her.’

‘I do that. As best I can, anyway. The master trusts me wi
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‘But she is becoming more difficult for you?’

‘Well, she’s growing up. I can’t watch her all the time.’

‘You won’t have to now. I am to be Miss Olivia’s governess.’

Olivia had been wondering whether Mrs Cookson was going to make buns today and was looking for the currants, but when she heard this, she turned her attention to the grown-ups’ conversation.

‘Governess? We’ve never had no governess before! Where a’ you from, then?’

‘Blackstone School on the other side of the moor. I was a pupil there, then a teacher.’

Mrs Cookson snorted. ‘Blackstone? Ee, there’s no wonder you look half starved. When did you last eat?’

‘I had bread and cold mutton with me for the walk over here.’ The mutton had been mostly fat and difficult to chew so she had thrown it away. But Mrs Cookson had fetched her a tankard of water when she had arrived and she was feeling better now.

‘You walked all that way, carrying your bag?’

‘It’s not very big.’ Miss Trent had placed it inside the front door when Mrs Cookson had let her in.

‘What about the rest of your belongings?’

‘I have nothing else, Mrs Cookson. Where is the schoolroom? ’

‘Schoolroom? This isn’t a mansion, you know, and the attics are too damp to use. But young Hesley had a tutor when he was a lad, so I suppose you mean those chambers.’

Olivia interrupted: ‘That’s where I sleep.’ She raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Up there.’

‘She’s right.They’re directly over the kitchens, but you’ll have to see to ’em yourself, Miss Trent. I’ve got enough to do down here.’

‘Can Miss Olivia show me the way?’

‘I don’t see why not.’ Mrs Cookson reached under her apron for her keys. ‘I’ll get you the linen, and we’ve bedpans for airing.’ She heaved a sigh. ‘There was a time when everything was done proper in this house. Foller me.’

Olivia trailed after them. Normally she would rather have been outside, chasing rabbits and catching butterflies. But she was too curious about Miss Trent and thought that she must be brave to disobey Uncle Hesley. If he found out that she hadn’t beaten Olivia very hard he would be angry.

Mrs Cookson placed the heavy sheets in Olivia’s arms and said, ‘Are you going to be’ave for Miss Trent, then?’

Olivia nodded, keeping her lips tight shut. Mrs Cookson didn’t shout at her if she did as she was told, and she wanted Mrs Cookson to stay her friend. She wondered if Miss Trent would be the same.

‘I hope you’re up to this ’un,’ Olivia heard her say to Miss Trent. ‘You don’t look old enough to be a teacher, like.’

‘I shall be one-and-twenty next year,’ Miss Trent replied firmly.

Mrs Cookson raised her eyebrows and turned down the corners of her mouth. ‘You can sleep in the anteroom between Miss Olivia’s bedchamber and the old tutor’s room.’ She shrugged. ‘Miss Olivia’s tea is at five o’clock in the kitchen.’

Olivia was hungry already and looked forward to teatime. She struggled up the wide wooden staircase and dropped her burden on a landing chair. Then she opened the schoolroom door so that it banged against the wall, glancing furtively at Miss Trent, who had followed with her small travelling bag.

Miss Trent was taking no notice of her. She was staring at the room, at its whitewashed walls and battered old furniture. It was the first of three linked chambers that jutted out from the back of the house and had windows overlooking the cobbled yard. This was where Mrs Cookson sent Olivia when she had been a nuisance downstairs, usually when it was raining and she couldn’t go outside to the walled garden and her secret wilderness. The stables and barn were across the cobbles and she could watch Matt and his farmhands scurry back and forth in the wet.

The schoolroom housed a heavy oak table, ancient and scarred, an assortment of chairs and a globe of the world that Olivia spun as she passed.An open cupboard in a corner revealed a jumble of teaching items, books and broken wooden toys.

Miss Trent surveyed them. ‘Are these yours?’ she asked.

‘They belong to Cousin Hesley.’

Miss Trent walked through to the next room to put down her bag. ‘Where is your cousin now?’ she asked, over her shoulder.

‘At the university,’ Olivia replied, feeling important to be asked.

‘In July?’

‘Oh!’ She wondered how much to say. ‘Well, he’s finished now and gone to stay in the North Riding. Uncle Hesley’s going as well when the shooting starts.’

Miss Trent did not respond. She was looking at the books scattered on the floorboards and picked up one that lay open at an illustration of the Tower of London.

‘That’s mine.’ Olivia snatched it from her and hugged it to herself. ‘That’s my castle.’

‘Will you show it to me?’ Miss Trent sank to the floor and began to examine the other books.

Olivia shook her head emphatically.

‘Can you read the words?’

Olivia continued to shake her head.

‘Perhaps you can draw it for me?’

‘Draw it?’

‘Copy the picture on this slate. Here.’ Miss Trent rummaged in the bottom of the cupboard and found some chalk. ‘Go and sit at the table while I tidy these shelves.’

Olivia concentrated on her drawing, resolving to take the slate with her next time she went to the old garden. She knew how she could smuggle it outside. She would never have thought of hiding it in her drawers if Miss Trent hadn’t mentioned it. Olivia wondered again why she hadn’t given her a proper beating in front of Uncle Hesley.

Miss Trent came to look over her shoulder as she drew.‘That’s good, Olivia,’ she said.

Olivia put down her chalk.‘Why didn’t you beat me harder?’ she asked.

‘You said you hadn’t done anything wrong.’

‘But we all have to do what Uncle Hesley says. That’s what Mrs Cookson told me.’

‘I use beating for really wicked things.’

‘What things?’

‘Telling lies. Stealing.’

‘Not for talking to a gypsy? Or crying in the middle of the night?’ Olivia saw Miss Trent frown.

‘Is that why your uncle beats you?’

‘Yes, and he’ll beat you, too, if you don’t do as he says!’ Olivia gave a satisfied smirk as Miss Trent’s eyes widened in alarm.

‘It’s time to wash for tea,’ her governess said briskly. ‘I’ll fetch some hot water.’

‘Oh, I just rinse my hands in the scullery.’

Miss Trent smiled at her. ‘Not now that I am your governess. Go and find your hairbrush and a clean pinafore.’

Olivia picked up her slate and walked through the anteroom, where Miss Trent’s bag sat unopened on the narrow bed, and on into her own bedchamber. She treasured this room because it was her private place, like her wilderness in the walled garden where no one could find her. She leaned the slate against the small wooden cupboard that contained the chamber pot, went to the washstand and took off her cap. She was still trying to drag the brush through her tangled hair when Miss Trent came back with a ewer of water.

‘Here, let me.’ Miss Trent tackled the ends, holding Olivia’s hair firmly at the roots so that it did not tug and hurt. She tied it back with a piece of bonnet tape and replaced Olivia’s cap. ‘Have you a looking-glass?’ she asked.

‘No.’

‘Or a small brush for your nails?’

Olivia didn’t reply, and Miss Trent said, ‘At least you have soap. Give your hands and face a good wash while I unpack.’ She poured some water into the china basin and took the rest with her, closing the door behind her.

Olivia swirled the water with a finger. It was still hot! She splashed it on her face and wiped it off with the cloth. Grey streaks appeared on the white linen and she grimaced. Mrs Cookson scolded her when this happened in the scullery.

Hesitantly, she took up the soap and turned it over and over in her hands, watching the water become cloudy. She played with the creamy foam for a minute, then rubbed her palms over her face, enjoying the soft lather on her skin. She decided she didn’t mind washing when the water was warm.

 

Harriet Trent took Olivia’s hand and went down for tea as soon as she heard the clock in the hall chime the hour. She had been hungry all day but the smell of baking bread when she had drawn water from the boiler in the kitchen range had increased her appetite. In the warm kitchen, one end of the table had been set for the three of them.

‘Is all this for us?’ she exclaimed, when she saw it. Tea at Blackstone School was usually bread and dripping.

There was the crust end of a game pie cut into two pieces, a dish of beetroot and some garden radishes, a bowl of boiled eggs and a leg of mutton, which Mrs Cookson was slicing with a long, sharp knife.

‘Not much left on this now.Will you have a taste, Miss Trent?’

‘Thank you.’ Her eyes were drawn to the breadboard with the crusty loaf and the slab of butter, which still bore the marks of the wooden bats from the dairy. Butter! Her mouth watered at the thought of butter on her bread.

Olivia stretched for an egg, tapped it on her plate and began to peel away its shell.

‘May I say grace, Mrs Cookson?’

‘If you must. I suppose that is the Blackstone way.’

‘Thank you. Put your egg down, Olivia.’ She waited patiently until her charge obeyed.

‘Lord, bless this food for our use and us to thy service. Amen.’

Mrs Cookson reached for the beetroot, muttering, ‘I hope the master knows what he’s doing taking you on.’ She picked up a stoneware jug.‘There’s milk to drink. Or would you rather have some o’ this ale?’

‘I’ll take the same as Olivia. You keep a good table, Mrs Cookson.’

‘Aye, well, that’s my job here. The mutton leg and pie are leftovers from the master’s dining room. Miss Olivia will have some bread and butter with her eggs, if you’ll oblige.’

Harriet sawed at the bread and understood why her pupil was so well grown for her age, and Mrs Cookson so rounded. But because she was used to having so little eat, it was difficult for her to do justice to the meal. She did her best, though, until her stomach felt uncomfortably full.

‘I see there is a fireplace in the schoolroom,’ she commented.

‘Aye, and the chimney’s swept. They were all done after Easter.’

‘Then may I light a fire during the winter months?’

‘You can have one now, if you want.You’ll need it if we get a north-easterly. But you’ll have to carry the coals yourself. I’ve no housemaids. Mind, with you taking the little ’un off me hands, I’ll be better off, make no mistake.’

‘How many buckets of coal may I have?’

‘As many as you want. The master owns Mexton Pit. Didn’t they tell you that at Blackstone? He sells ’em his slack, doesn’t he?’

Harriet nodded. Slack was the cheapest coal found at the edges of the seams. It was poor quality and mixed with stones that left clinker in the grates when it had burned. The master would not be able to sell it to the furnaces and forges in the valley because it didn’t give out enough heat.

‘We allus have plenty of coal here,’ Mrs Cookson continued. ‘The pit sends it by the drayload wi’ a couple o’ men to shovel it in the coalhole across the yard.’

Good food. Warm fires. And her own small bedchamber. Suddenly Harriet felt anxious that something dreadful might happen to take it all away. It was a strange feeling and it reminded her of how she had felt when she had first arrived at Blackstone School. Austere as it was, it was better than where she had come from. And now, more than ten years later, she was grateful to be gone from there.

‘What happened to your kinfolk, Miss Trent? All the girls at Blackstone are orphans, aren’t they?’

‘No, but I was. My mother and father died when I was seven.’ She remembered them as being old, with grey hair and bent backs. All three of them had been laid low by a fever and only she had survived. It was a long time ago now but she had not forgotten the fear when she had been taken away from the only home she had known in the back of a farm cart.

‘And you’ve been at Blackstone ever since?’

‘I was taken to a poorhouse first and stayed there for two years.’

‘We had a scullery-maid from a poorhouse once,’ Olivia exclaimed.

‘Aye, good little worker she were till she upped and left wi’ a passing tinker. Still, we got you now, Miss Trent.’

‘She isn’t a scullery-maid,’ Olivia stated loudly.

I was in the poorhouse, Harriet recalled. And a laundry-maid. She said, ‘I have been luckier than most. My mother had a distant cousin in the clergy who heard of my misfortune. He applied to the trustees at Blackstone for a charity place there.’ When she’d arrived at the school, she had thought it wasn’t much better than the poorhouse, but at least she had had lessons for some of the time, instead of washing and scrubbing all day.

‘What did you do at Blackstone?’ Olivia asked.

‘I learned.’

‘Learned what?’

‘All the things I’m going to teach you.’ As she said this, she remembered how terrified she had been that she might be sent back to the poorhouse, and how hard she had studied to avoid that fate. She saw that now she felt the same about returning to Blackstone School, with its frugal ways and strict regime. She never wanted to go back to the humiliation of being a charity girl, walking with her head bowed and for ever beholden to her betters. She shivered at the memory of her attic dormitory, shared with more than a dozen others, where the water in the washstand ewers turned to ice overnight.

‘Are you all right, Miss Trent?’ Mrs Cookson asked.

‘A little tired from the walk here. That’s all.’

Even as a pupil teacher her only privilege had been the worn gown and boots given to the school by clergymen’s wives who passed on their servants’ clothing for the older girls.