The Disgrace of Kitty Grey (14 page)

‘The milk is too rich for most of our customers. Too thick, too creamy. Give 'em indigestion, it would.'

‘Would it?' I asked in surprise, for, newly up from the country, I believed what I was told.

‘It goes further when 'tis damped down,' he said, grinning. ‘Sometimes it goes near twice as far.'

And then, of course, I realised what he was talking about. The milk, even though it was poor quality, was to be diluted before it was sold.

‘You water it down?'

‘Hush!' he said. ‘But not with river water,' he added virtuously, ‘for once I had complaints that there was a fish in the milk.'

I stared at him in dismay.

‘No, you must use water from the pump,' he said. ‘A quarter-pail of water to every pail of milk. I'll go and fetch it now.'

He went up and we ‘damped' the milk down and I did not approve in the slightest, but merely wondered how many more London ways I would have to get used to.

Betsy and I walked along Fleet Street towards the Strand, and the distance seemed far greater now that I had a yoke over my shoulders with a pail of milk balanced on each end. These pails were not lidded, but open to the elements so that anyone might spit or cough over them, or apprentice boys could, for sport, choose to throw in a handful of dirt.

Betsy was scratchy and tired and determined to be difficult. She wouldn't hold on to my hand, but kept stopping and looking in windows or sitting down on the cobbles to talk to passing cats and dogs. I would alternately shout at her, plead with her, try to bribe her – but, of course, with a great wooden yoke across my shoulders I often couldn't move quickly enough to catch hold of her. In the end I had to promise her faithfully that, as soon as I had delivered all the milk, we would go down to the river and look for Will. She was cold, I knew, and hungry, too, for although we'd had some undiluted milk to drink (and trusted to luck that it would not be tainted), other than that we'd had nothing.

We both needed to eat. Worried about money, I reckoned up the price of things in my head: I had pawned the fur rug for two shillings and five pence, our room for two nights had been a shilling, so, after taking off the cost of the food we'd had the previous day, there should now be one shilling and sixpence in my pocket (although I could not, of course, check this because of trying to keep the yoke balanced). This would pay for two more nights' lodging. But we had to eat right
at that moment
, for it was near noon and Betsy was trailing behind me again, crying, so I stopped a pieman and bought a meat pasty. I gave Betsy the biggest half, tried to stop her tears and sighed mightily as I did so, for I had discovered that having a child with you was a very great burden and that I was not really up to it. I loved her very much, I was sorry for what she was having to go through, but also felt sorry for myself and longed not to have the responsibility of her.

By the time I found the first house marked with an H, my back felt as if it were breaking. As I walked along, I shifted the yoke around on my shoulders, first leaning it one way, then the other, then putting both my hands up and underneath it to help bear its weight, but whatever I did brought little relief.

‘Milk below!' I called up to the houses. ‘Fresh milk below!'

I knew I must look a sight, for I was grubby and tired, with bird's-nest hair and cheeks cracking under smudges of dried milk. So much for the pretty pastoral scene depicted by Miss Alice and Miss Sophia, I thought. So much for the May Day milkmaids, garlanded with flowers, dancing along the street to a fiddler's tune. I knew the truth now.

 

By calling ‘Milk below!' under the windows of those houses marked with a chalked H, I sold all the milk in my pails quite quickly. Though I had to get back for that afternoon's milking, I'd promised Betsy that we would go and look for Will, so didn't think it would hurt to go back the slightly longer way, by the river path.

Walking down Clover Street, the stink of the river hit us as soon as we were no longer sheltered by buildings, and this odour increased the closer we came to the water, even though it had rained the night before and washed most of the sewage and garbage away on the tide. I thanked heaven that it was a cold month, too, for as I'd walked along Fleet Street I'd heard a woman say that in high summer the river smelled so bad it could make a grown man fall down insensible.

Once we had stopped gagging at the stench, there was much to stare at: steamboats, barges laden with grain or coal, little boats with sails, wherries, sailing ships with cargo aboard, and even one or two grand barges bearing the flags and insignia of livery companies. Most numerous of all, however, were the ferry boats darting backwards and forwards laden with passengers, with those who rowed them shouting and hollering at other, larger boat-owners, who hollered right back.

So much to see; so many ferry boats. How was I ever going to find Will amongst them?

I stood there, bewildered, my eyes criss-crossing the river to the far side and back again, trying to count how many little boats there were going backwards and forwards. This was a hopeless task, I soon realised, akin to trying to count the number of cherries on a tree.

There was an old sailor close by us, in dark oilskin and a sou'wester, and I waited until he'd finished puffing on his pipe, then asked if he knew how many ferrymen there were on the river.

‘Just roughly,' I added. ‘Would it be about . . . one hundred?'

‘One hundred!' he said scornfully. ‘Pssshh! I could see one hundred with my eyes shut. No, there must be nigh on a thousand. Probably more.'

I stared at him in dismay.

‘Ferry boats is like ants all over the river and back again,' he said, gesturing with his arms. ‘Why, there are so many ferrymen with so many boats that sometimes a fellow has to wait half an hour at Puddle Dock for a landing space.'

My heart sank. ‘
That
many ferries?'

Betsy was hanging over the river wall and not listening to us, so I felt safe to ask him, in a low voice, if he might possibly know of the Villiers family, who were ferrymen born and bred.

He shook his head.

‘They have a cousin who has lately joined them from the country,' I added as a desperate afterthought, but he just grunted and began refilling his pipe.

Betsy straightened up, sighed and yawned. ‘Oh, where
is
Will?' she said crossly. ‘I'm getting tired of him not being here.'

‘So am I,' I answered miserably.

‘When are we going to find him?'

I shook my head. ‘I don't know. You see, we don't know which stretch of water he works on. The Thames is a big, big river.'

I decided to tell her – for I thought I should introduce the idea as soon as possible – that we might not be able to find Will. ‘He could be anywhere.' I looked at her carefully, trying to judge her mood. ‘We might not find him. We might have to go home and wait for him to come back to us.'

‘But you said he . . .'

‘I didn't realise how big London was, Betsy.'

‘I hate Will!' she suddenly cried. ‘I do! We both hate him, don't we?'

‘Hush, no, of course we don't,' I said, but there was no conviction in my voice.

Chapter Thirteen

 

 

I carried on for several days at Mr Holloway's, being paid daily. I milked twice a day (thankfully, my milk round in the afternoons was shorter and closer) and between times endeavoured to get the cows, churns and milk pails as clean as I could. After only three days, I was pleased to see that the cows all began to yield a little more milk and, though Mr Holloway did not actually comment on this, he did nod and look pleased when I told him.

Some of what remained of the milk was sold to people who came to the door of the dairy, and the rest was taken away by Mr Holloway. I did no churning of butter nor making of cream or cheese during this time: there was never enough milk. Besides, Mr Holloway told me that those living in the nearby tenements could not have afforded such items. Over those days I grew to know my cows a little, for when your cheek is pressed up against the warm flank of an animal for twenty minutes or so, you do come to feel a kind of understanding between you. The duty I very much disliked was the diluting of milk with water, for I'd long believed that the milk's quality was dependent on how happy the cows were, and that a miserably thin liquid showed badly on both stock-keeper and milkmaid. Those finer feelings, however, had to be pushed to one side for the time being, for I knew I had to go along with London ways if I was going to survive.

Betsy was nearly always at my side, and I was constantly trying to keep her occupied in one way or another. My life had become a struggle and I sometimes felt as though I was one of the street jugglers, trying to keep ten coloured balls in the air at once. When I was not milking, or scrubbing and scouring, or walking along the road under the weight of the yoke, I was trying to keep Betsy from running off, telling her tales to try to amuse her or cajoling, chastising or pleading with her.

On what should have been my seventh day of employment at the dairy, something awful happened: Betsy became ill. She woke in the small hours vomiting – an action that was so strange and alien to her that it made her scream in fright between bouts. I was kept busy comforting her, running up and down the stairs fetching water, cleaning up, emptying the chamber pot into the closet in the yard and returning it to the room for the next attack. At one point, the poor child made so much noise in her panic that our neighbours in the next rooms banged on the door and shouted at us – not to offer help, but to bring down curses on our heads for disturbing them. I was very frightened at all this, and felt I could not cope, for we had been a healthy bunch in the country and I had little to no experience of disease or illness. Terrified, I wondered what would happen if I caught this malaise as well. Who would look after us?

As the clocks struck four o'clock that morning I was wide awake and worried. Betsy was not vomiting so much, but lay shivering on the bed under the weight of all the clothes we possessed while I, lying on the edge of the bed and freezing cold in my undershift, stroked back her hair from her face and made soothing noises. I did not know what to do. I had to go to work – my cows would be waiting for me and unless I worked I couldn't afford to pay for the room – but how could I possibly leave Betsy? What if she became worse?
What if she died?

With this thought uppermost in my head, I began weeping. I should never have brought her with me! I should have come to London alone, run my errand for Miss Alice and then gone home. On my own, I surely wouldn't have been so distracted as to lose that bag. To think that I'd been so naive to believe that, amidst all the thousands of people in London, I'd find Will! Especially, I thought now for the first time, if he didn't want to be found . . .

 

I must have fallen asleep again because daylight was showing through the thick frost on the windows by the time I rose. I thought about how I felt: was I sick or aching? Was my throat or head hurting? The answer to all these questions was no, so I carefully took my shawl off the bed and wrapped it around me, then examined Betsy. She was sleeping, pale and still, but I could not tell if it was a healthy sleep or one of total exhaustion. Her hair was stuck around her face and sweat beaded her brow, yet her body remained cold and her fingers and toes were tinged with blue.

I shivered and sighed, scratching on the window to try and see through the layer of frost to the street below. By now, of course, Mr Holloway would realise that I hadn't turned up to milk the cows. I should have gone and explained things to him, but was too scared to leave Betsy – and too nervous about what Mr Holloway might say. I felt sorry for my cows when I thought about him discovering them unmilked and, cross and heavy-handed, taking the pail to them himself, but there was nothing I could do about it.

I could only remember one piece of advice from my mother regarding health matters and that was to feed a cold and starve a fever, but this was of little help now, for I was not sure if Betsy had either or both. I thought back, but couldn't remember any of my brothers or sisters being sick enough to stay in bed – although we had all had the spotted fever, of course . . .