Paying Guests (45 page)

‘Worrying?’

‘About next door, to tell the truth, Mum. I try to keep a brave front just like you do, I’m sure, but I can’t help it. One minute I think it’ll all be all right, stop fussing, woman, I says to myself, and the next, well, I keep imagining all sorts goin’ on there to spoil our life here. It’s all so good, ‘n’t it, Mum? Us and our guests and all so happy – and there she sits like – like some sort of spider just waitin’ and us not knowin’ what way she’ll jump.’

‘Do spiders jump, Eliza?’ Tilly said absurdly and came to sit down on the bed beside her. ‘You see how foolish you are? She is not, in fact, there in the house, but away somewhere, perhaps even abroad – or so she told me in her letter. I cannot see why you should think of her in such a manner. There is no sense in worrying yourself into illness, now is there?’

‘That’s as may be,’ Eliza said. ‘But you do it – I’ve watched your face and I know what you’re thinkin’ and it’s not possible for me not to worry when you do. We’ve got all our lovely plans for us and the future and – and this woman and her house – oh, if only somethin’ would happen to scare her away! I keep havin’ these imaginings, you know? I think – suppose the house was spoiled in some way and made impossible for her to fix up. Wouldn’t she be glad to sell it to you then at a low price just to be rid of it? I know you’ve been careful with money this long time, and we have such good reliable guests, you’d have no problems, I’m sure, in finding the money. Then you could fix it up as part of Quentin’s, couldn’t you? If you was to buy it as it is, you’d have to pull out the heart of it anyway to make it fit in with us here as we are, wouldn’t you? So it wouldn’t be a difficulty for you if it was to catch fire inside like, would it? I think about that –’ She brooded for a moment. ‘I think about that a lot.’

‘Well, it isn’t going to catch fire or be spoiled inside,’ Tilly said firmly. ‘So stop thinking such stuff. And even if it were, it is no doubt insured as is this establishment, so it would make no difference to Dorcas, so it is all a nonsense, a childish dream. You are having notions because of your condition, that’s all there is to it. I remember when I was heavy with Duff I was much the same. And here’s Duff home again and –’

Eliza lifted her head and stared at her, her eyes huge with surprise. ‘Mr Duff here? Oh, Mum, has he come home? Why didn’t you say? Where is he then? Do let me see him.’ She struggled to her feet and pulled at her hair with slightly shaky fingers to smooth it and then scrabbled for her boots. ‘Here’s me lying here in a foolish megrim and Mr Duff home, what will he think of me? And so much to do for dinner, oh dear, oh dear.’

‘Eliza!’ Tilly protested as the other made for the door, pulling her skirts neatly in place and shooting her cuffs. ‘Please do rest! You’re in no state to –’

‘I’m very well indeed, thank you, Mum,’ Eliza said firmly. ‘It was just a momentary thing on account of I let myself fall asleep and ashamed indeed I am of it. I’m well rested now and feeling very bobbish indeed, thank you. And all the better for knowing Mr Duff is here.’

Tilly followed her out into the short corridor that led to the kitchen proper and pulled the door closed behind her. Eliza went ahead of her into the kitchen to check her fire, and as Tilly reached her, was standing with her arms akimbo staring at the grate, which was burning merrily, as Polly crouched beside it, sweeping the hearth with a short brush. Tilly was surprised to see her, too; she had not heard her come into the kitchen.

‘Well, Miss, and what are you about?’ Eliza demanded. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be with that young imp o’ Satan o’ yours? Who’s looking to him, I’d like to know?’

‘Oh, he’s asleep, Mrs Horace,’ Polly said and looked over her shoulder and grinned cheekily. ‘Just like you was.’

‘Mind your tongue, minx,’ Eliza said but there was no malice in it. The two of them had, over the weeks, drifted into a comfortable
sort of relationship which was marked by such sprightly exchanges. ‘You be away to him and see he’s all right, now. He’s your task, not my fires – where’s Lucy as ought to be tending them?’

‘Missus sent her to help Mr Duff to unpack,’ Polly said and stood up and dusted her hands together. ‘I got to fetch up some hot water for ‘im, and I was just setting the fire ‘igher to get the kettle to boil the faster – ah! There we goes.’ And she hauled the kettle, which had begun to rattle its lid energetically, to the hot water jug standing on the hearth and filled it. She went into the kitchen then to refill the kettle from the pump, set it back on the fire and then picked up the steaming copper jug, which looked almost as tall as she was.

‘Now, don’t you go spilling that,’ Eliza said scoldingly. ‘Give it here – I’ll take it up to him.’

‘You’ll do nothing of the sort, Eliza,’ Tilly said sharply. ‘If Polly can’t manage it, then she shall go and fetch Rosie or Lucy to help her.’

‘I can manage well enough,’ Polly said and, indeed, seemed to have no trouble carrying the jug. She had set a folded towel over the top to hold the steam in and was already on her way to the stairs and the upper floors with it. ‘I’ll be back for another lot as soon as it’s boiled.’ And she went toiling away up the stairs leaving them both in the kitchen.

‘I’ll have to wait till he comes down to see him then,’ Eliza said, disappointed. ‘Is he well, Mum?’

‘Not as well as he might be,’ Tilly said after a moment, and then went on and told her, as briefly as she could, what had happened. Eliza listened, her face growing darker with every sentence.

‘That nasty madam!’ she burst out when Tilly had finished. ‘And to think she had once so beguiled me with her pretty ways. I thought her a dear, good girl, I did, and now she’s gone and done that to our Mr Duff? Well, I hope she may rot in hell for it. As good and loving a boy as our Duff, to be treated so. It’s the outside of enough! Oh, is it any wonder,’ she went on with sublime illogicality. ‘That there Dorcas is such a dreadful, wicked woman as
to frighten us so when she’s got such a daughter as this one? I hope they both rot, that I do.’

‘Eliza, do stop this nonsense about Dorcas!’ Tilly said. ‘You are in danger of turning her into something a great deal more important than she is.’

‘As you have too, Mum,’ Eliza said stubbornly. ‘And you can’t say you haven’t.’

‘I know,’ Tilly said after a moment. ‘But we must be sensible. Now, let’s see about tonight’s dinner, and see if we have time to make something special for Duff. He needs a few creature comforts, feeling as he does.’

Eliza brightened. ‘Indeed, we shall, Mum! I’ve some lovely damsons I put up that’ll be fit and ready for a good pie. It won’t take me above twenty minutes or so. He loves a nice damson pie, does Mr Duff, and I’ve some lovely thick cream to send to table with it, for the dairy man came just this morning with the eggs and I took an extra pint of best cream thinking it might come in handy – it’s like it was meant, ain’t it? The Lord looks after them that looks after themselves.’ With which gnomic utterance she hurried out to the larder to get to work. And Tilly sighed with relief and set about her own evening duties, as happy as it was possible to be under the circumstances. At least one of her problems had been solved. Duff was home, and even though he was a mostly unhappy Duff, to have him under her eyes again was all she needed to lift her spirits very high indeed.

Her delight in having him with her persisted for the following days and greatly reduced her shrinking at the idea of once more taking Polly to the countryside to see her brothers as she had promised; for to do so with Duff to keep them company on the journey, and help with carrying the baskets necessary for such a trip, would be much more agreeable than doing so with only an over-excited and nervous Polly.

The first time she had taken Polly to Kent had been an unhappy experience; the boys were very content on their farm, and were clearly thriving in their new lives. They had, like Polly herself,
fattened up considerably and had the agreeable weather-beaten look that comes from outdoor work. They did not live in great comfort, it had to be admitted, since they were accommodated in the barn, and slept in hay, but since all the young labourers working there lived under the same conditions (unless they chose to marry, when they were found a cottage) and the barn was snug and dry, this did not constitute a great hardship. Indeed the boys seemed to enjoy the rough and tumble of life with their fellows and had shown only a brief interest in their sister’s arrival. That was the first thing that had made the expedition an unhappy one. After their initial huge interest in the basket of good things that Eliza had provided for Polly to take to her brothers – some plum cake and a dozen or so fruit tarts left from the previous day’s luncheon service, together with pots of jam and some honey as well as a number of other treats – they had been about their own interests, leaving Tilly and Polly, together with a now tired and fractious Georgie, to wander about the farm on their own.

They had admired the cows and the fruit trees, neither of which had much to offer in the way of interest in these dank winter months, and became very damp and chilled. The farmer had been too busy to do more than welcome them cordially enough and to offer them luncheon at his wife’s lavish table, which had quite overawed Polly, for there had been so many people there all bustling and coming and going at different times, and they had made their way home to London in a less than happy state.

This time, Tilly promised herself, it would be better and she assured Polly the same thing.

‘You should be glad they are so happy and busy, Polly,’ she said. ‘If they were weeping and clinging to you as they used to do, that would make you a great deal more unhappy, would it not?’

‘Yes, Missus,’ Polly said lugubriously. ‘I dare say it would.’ She brightened then. ‘But maybe this time they’ll have a bit more time for us? It’s dark of winter now ‘n’t it? There can’t be that much to do on a farm when it’s freezin’ cold, like this.’

It was indeed bitter January weather, and Tilly wore her thickest
fur-trimmed shawl mantle and carried a muff as well, and added a soft woollen scarf to protect her ears beneath her bonnet. Polly was bundled into a thick brown ulster coat that had once been Duff’s and which served perfectly well for so small a girl, with a pair of thick black woollen stockings and well made boots to protect her feet, as well as a good bonnet and scarf like Tilly’s. Eliza had looked at her sharply when she was dressed and stood in the kitchen, very neat and respectable, and bade her to mind her manners and to be grateful for Mrs Quentin’s great goodness; at which Tilly shook her head in discomfort and Polly looked sulky. But that she was grateful was undoubted, for she stroked the thick cloth of the coat surreptitiously and with much pleasure.

Duff was silent for most of the journey, ostensibly reading a newspaper as the train they took on the London, Chatham and Dover Railway bore them south-eastwards from Victoria Station, a cluster of somewhat battered wooden buildings at the end of Grosvenor Road, and Tilly was glad of that. Polly was silent too, and the baby Georgie slept, which pleased them all, and the time passed agreeably as the train rattled through the fields of Kent, leaving a great plume of grey smoke on a sky which was not very much brighter on this dreary January day.

At the farm, which lay some mile or two outside Faversham, their welcome was an improvement on their first visit. As Polly had suspected, the farm was less busy than it had been last time, and her brothers were given more time to spend with her by the farmer, who was a cheerful enough man and somewhat garrulous. He bade them take their sister about the place while he entertained Tilly and Duff with some splendour in the heavily furnished parlour, plying them with ratafia and cake in quite the modish manner, as he talked busily about his view of the world and his place in it. His wife, a thin bony woman with a blank face and quite unlike the usual image of a farmer’s helpmeet, sat silently, clearly well accustomed to saying nothing.

‘It’s a great benefit to these boys to get the chance to work on a farm,’ Mr Milstead boomed. ‘When I recall how they looked when they was brought here, all shivering and white as they was, well, it
does my heart good to look at ‘em now. It’s the third set of such lads as I’ve had through my hands, Mrs Quentin, and I’m not ashamed to say I’m right proud of the ways they turn out. Two of the first lot is wed now to local girls and living in cottages on our land. One’s shaped into a very good cowman and the other’s as good a fruit grower as you’ll find in these parts, now I’ve trained him, and you can’t say fairer than that. These lads can do just as well.’

Duff seemed to brighten a little and said, ‘What sort of cows do you keep here, Mr Milstead?’ The question made the farmer’s eyes light up with enthusiasm as he launched himself into a panegyric on the subject of good English dun-coloured breeds like Norfolk polled cattle, as compared with Jersey or Guernsey breeds and Friesians which, Mr Milstead avowed, were good milk producers but, of course, gave nothing like as much cream as a well cared for Lincoln Red.

Duff joined in with some animation and Tilly listened, startled by the interest he showed. Oddly, though, she realized as the conversation went on, that it was not so much the cows that interested him as their produce. He seemed to know a good deal about the quality of milk and the cream that was skimmed from it, of the making of good butter and even of cheeses, and equally as much about the way the beef each breed produced cooked and ate and how much hanging it needed to give it the right toothsome tenderness. I must tell Eliza how knowledgeable he has become, she thought. There’ll be a lot she can learn from him.

And this was a notion that grew when the discussion left cows and turned to fruit. Mr Milstead had a mixed farm, dairy and fruit (‘For which Kentish farmer doesn’t grow his apples and pears, I’d like to know?’ he said with a great guffaw) and now Mrs Milstead began to show some interest too.

‘The best for cooking, in my estimation,’ she announced in a surprisingly deep voice, ‘is Ribstons. They makes the fairest apple pie you ever set your knife to. But if you wants to make apple butter now, to preserve it, then you wants a good Nonsuch. For plain eating, though –’