The Disgrace of Kitty Grey (13 page)

‘Ten,' I said promptly.

We settled on seven, and arranged that I should start the following morning at four.

I explained to Betsy that I had to work to earn some money while we searched for Will, and she accepted this quite readily. I would, I said, be going to Mr Holloway's dairy early in the mornings, and that, on waking, she was to stay in bed for as long as possible and only when she couldn't possibly wait any longer should she come round to the dairy to find me. I got a lump in my throat as I said this, thinking that the poor child should be safely at home in a warm kitchen with a family, not stuck in a miserable room for hours on end with no one bar bedbugs for company, but this was the best I could do.

I'd bought some short ends of narrow red ribband, and with these and several lengths of straw taken out of the mattress, told her to make some more corn dollies while she waited. I impressed upon her that, on leaving the lodging house to come and find me, she should come straight round to the dairy and not dilly-dally or speak to anyone. I had already, listening to women in the market, heard of a child who had been taken off the street, stripped of all its good clothes and sent home wearing only its vest. Betsy's little country smock, shawl and shoes were only worth a few pennies, but nevertheless would be valuable to a woman whose child had nothing. I just had to hope and pray that nothing bad would happen to her.

Chapter Twelve

 

 

I woke to hear the clocks strike three o'clock and lay awake until I heard a cryer call that it was half past three on a wet morning. Rising, I found the room dismally cold and, although I was used to waking to a freezing room in Bridgeford Hall,
this
cold seemed much worse, because there was no rug on the floor, no shutters at the windows nor a bold patchwork quilt to lift the cheerless scene. I would have liked a clean apron to wear to work, but had not, of course, thought to bring such a thing with me. The evening before I had asked our landlord for a jug and basin, however, so I was at least able to wash myself, and I used Betsy's little scrubbing brush to cleanse my hands and nails thoroughly, just in case my new employer should take it upon himself to inspect them. I was, in spite of the gloom of the morning, looking forward to meeting my new four-legged friends and seeing the extent of my workplace. If I did well there and he kept me on, surely it wouldn't take long for me to earn our fare back to Devonshire.

On leaving the lodging house I had to light a candle in order to see my way through the streets and was very nervous as to where I was putting my feet, for it had rained heavily in the night and much rubbish – offal, mud, dead rats and stinking old green-stuffs – had swept its way down from the higher ground of the fruit and vegetable market and deposited itself into the corners and holes between the cobbles. It had stopped raining, but the ground was very slippery, and twice I fell over on to heaps of soft and squelchy matter, so I fear that when I arrived I was not nearly as clean as when I left.

Going through the rusty gates I could hear, somewhere, two or three cows mooing heartily, so I presumed that the cow stalls were out at the back of the dairy, perhaps with some outside space and a little patch of green grass for them to chew on.

I called, ‘Mr Holloway!' then stood and listened through the mooing for a reply. Light was coming in, dimly, from a lantern in the street, which enabled me to see a sconce in the wall of the dairy with a flint box beside it. I lit the candle in the sconce and, while I waited, looked around me. The stink of cows was horrendous; I began to wonder how clean their stalls were, and how good their milk.

‘Have you made a start?'

I jumped, alarmed, for the mud was soft underfoot and I hadn't heard my employer coming up behind me. He stood frowning at me, his face so strangely illuminated by the lantern he carried that he looked like someone dressed as a ghostie for All Hallows' Eve.

‘Not yet,' I replied. I looked around. ‘Where are the pails and stools?' I asked, then gave a little nervous laugh. ‘Where are the
cows
?'

‘All down below,' he said, and he gestured into the space beyond. ‘They had a bale of straw and a sack o' turnips late last night.'

I looked at him, baffled.

‘Get you started, then. They're below, I said.'

‘Below?' I repeated. I did not have the slightest notion what he meant. In the lower field, perhaps?

He shook his head. ‘Country girls!' he said with some amusement. ‘Down the ladder – off you go.' He gave me the lantern. ‘I'll be back in a couple of hours. You should be finished by then.'

I didn't say anything in reply to this. Eight cows are not that many for one girl to milk, but the fastest time in which I can milk a cow is ten minutes – and that on a good day when your cow is being quiet and obedient. If she wants to be difficult, then twenty minutes might be more usual, and even up to thirty minutes if you don't know her well and she has a mind to play you up.

Mr Holloway left me, which I was glad about, for I had been afeared he would stay and watch me milking. Lifting the lantern, I tried to see into the darkness below me and took a nervous step forward. Down the ladder, he'd told me. But surely the cows couldn't be down a ladder,
underground
?

But they were. Another two steps forward and I could see a large square hole cut into the floor, like a trapdoor, with a ladder descending from it, and lifting my lantern higher and peering downwards I could see some movement below.

I stood and stared down, scarce able to believe what I was seeing. Cows in the cellar! Why, these poor creatures should be outside enjoying the dawn air while they waited to go into their milking parlour, or at least be in a barn, feeding. How could cows possibly live underground?

I hitched up my skirts, placed the lantern at the top of the hole and climbed down a few steps, then retrieved the lantern and climbed the rest of the way. It was a good job, I thought, that I was used to the smell of cows, although this was not so much a smell as a heady, stomach-wrenching stink. At the bottom of the ladder, crammed into a small space and looking thoroughly miserable, the eight cows were standing in their own filth. They had a manger of turnips to eat, and a bale of hay was hanging about head height, but they were paying little attention to these. At some point someone had made an effort to clear their standing space, for there was a channel affair running around the room and a long-handled broom to brush the muck into, but it made little difference to the overall state of the cellar before me.

I turned my attention to the cows themselves and could have cried at their condition. What a sight they were: crammed together with barely enough space to turn around in, smelly and distressed and stuck all over with muck and mud. How miserable they looked! Why, the poor creatures had probably never rolled in a patch of clover or eaten fresh grass in all their lives. I felt like turning and scrambling back up that ladder as fast as I could, but I knew I had to stay.

Sighing, I surveyed the cows. I was in a quandary now, for the main thing with milking, the first lesson I was ever taught by my mother, was that cleanliness must come first. Nothing else was as important as ensuring that a milkmaid's hands, the hindquarters of the cow and any equipment that was going to come into contact with the milk was as clean as could be, or otherwise all sorts of infections and illnesses could be spread. I had no access here to hot water, however, and no way of knowing if the pails I could see standing about had been scoured and aired, or the churns cleaned with wood ash and then scalded. I thought it was highly unlikely.

For the sake of the cows I wanted to do the best I could, so I went back up the ladder and out on to the street, filled a pail with water from the nearest pump and took it back down. I then went up and down the ladder several times for clean water, so that half an hour passed before I had even started the milking.

After acquainting myself with the cows (I believed, from what I could see, they were of the Jersey breed), I washed their rear ends with some rags that I'd found hanging on nails, and while doing so spoke to them in a gentle voice, telling them of my lovely South Devons at home, of how Betsy and I had come to be in London and even about the falseness of Will, so that they became used to my voice. People sometimes query the effectiveness of this, but I knew from experience that cows who are spoken to kindly yield more milk than cows where the milkmaid has nothing at all to say for herself or, worse still, is abrupt and offhand.

At last I was ready to begin and though, in that grim little room, it was difficult to find a space where a girl could sit and milk quietly and not be kicked by the next cow in line, eventually I found a corner, picked what I thought to be the cow in most urgent need of being milked, rinsed out the bucket and started.

The quality of the milk yielded was poor; I could see that straight away. It was thin and blue-looking rather than creamy in texture and colour. And although, of course, cows give less milk in the winter, I barely got a full pail from the first one I tried. The others gave about the same and I knew the truth of the expression that miserable cows give miserable portions.

Mr Holloway arrived down the ladder – thankfully much later than he had predicted – just as I was finishing.

‘Is this all you have from 'em?' he asked, holding a candle aloft over the line of buckets.

‘Indeed it is – and you're lucky to have it!' I said, for by this time I had roused myself into a ball of indignation about the cows and the conditions in which they lived.

‘ 'Tis a wretched small amount.'

‘And 'tis a wretched life for these cows – standing around in their own muck day after day with ne'er a sight of the sun,' I retorted. I went on, surprised at my own boldness. ‘It's a wonder that they haven't dried up entirely.'

He shrugged, and it was strange to me that, whereas I would have taken it personally if someone criticised my cows and the way they were kept, he didn't seem to be bothered either way. ‘These are London cows born and bred,' he said. ‘That's the way of cows 'ere.'

‘But they need air and light and grass!'

‘They get their turnips and their good hay. Why, some days in winter they cost more to feed than they gives.'

‘But do they ever go outside?'

‘Not they!' he said. ‘They come in, they're lowered down on ropes and there they stay until they dry up or die.' He looked interested suddenly. ‘But in the country, surely your beasts aren't out all year round?'

‘They stay under cover in really bad weather,' I said, ‘but most winter days they are turned out to nibble the grass and take a little air.'

‘Take a little air!' He began laughing. ‘Seems to me that cows in Devonshire lead an altogether daintier life than those in London!'

‘I believe they do,' I said, and might have gone on to tell him of Miss Alice and Miss Sophia's pastoral
tableau
, except that I heard Betsy's voice from above, calling my name.

‘I'll go and do the round now, shall I?' I asked Mr Holloway quickly, before he could comment on Betsy. ‘Where must I go?'

She shouted again, saying that she had made six corn dollies and had no more ribband left, and he glanced upwards and looked curious, but didn't say anything. I called back that I would come up in a moment, and prayed that she wouldn't wander off.

‘My milk round is at the other end of the Strand,' he said. ‘I have twenty or more houses with an H chalked on the wall – that means they have credit with me. If you call outside them, a housemaid will come down with a jug.'

I nodded. The Strand was, I knew, some fair distance off, for we had walked all the way down it after arriving at Charing Cross. ‘I must take the yoke and pails?' I asked.

He nodded, then gave a humourless grin. ‘But afore you go, you must visit the cow with the iron tail.'

‘
Which
cow?' I asked.

He gave a snort of laughter. ‘ 'Tis what we cow-keepers in London call the water pump.'

I still did not know what he was talking about. ‘To wash the pails?'

‘No, to dampen the milk!'

‘
Dampen?
' I repeated.