The Disgrace of Kitty Grey (5 page)

‘Kitty! You've gone into a dream. What do you think I should do? Should I go and ask Mrs Bonny now, or Mr Griffin – or wait until morning?'

I sighed. ‘I think they'll take it better coming from me,' I said. ‘I'll ask them. Betsy will have to stay the night here, at least.'

‘And I'll come for her in the morning,' Will said, and kissed my forehead. ‘Thank you for what you're doing. I love you.'

My heart gave a jolt at this, but I was too overwhelmed to respond.

 

‘Milord would throw a fit!' Mrs Bonny said when I'd finished explaining and begging. ‘This is a dairy farm, not an orphanage. We can't go taking in stray children willy-nilly!'

Most of the servants had gone to bed, thank goodness, although a scullery maid was there, trying to appear busy polishing the cutlery but actually listening to us for all she was worth.

I looked from Mrs Bonny to Mr Griffin imploringly. ‘But the poor child . . .'

‘What happened to her mother?' asked Mr Griffin.

‘She died giving birth to Betsy's twin. The twin died, too,' I added, and heard a shocked intake of breath from Mrs Bonny.

‘And her father?' Mr Griffin asked.

I shrugged. ‘He died shortly after Betsy's ma. I'm not sure what of.'

‘What work did he do?'

‘He worked the ferry, Mr Griffin – had a little cottage down the lane. Will took over the rowing boat but he couldn't afford the rent on the cottage, so now he stays in the hut down by the water.'

‘Couldn't the child live there with him?' Mrs Bonny asked.

I shook my head. ‘That was Will's first thought, Mrs Bonny, but the place is green with damp all year round and half under water in the winter.'

Neither of them spoke for a while, but I saw them exchanging glances.

‘She would be with Will all day, as she is now!' I said quickly. ‘He catches enough fish for them to eat, and whenever the baker crosses the river he pays Will in bread. Betsy would not cost Lord and Lady Baysmith a penny! I'm just asking if she could sleep here at the hall, and perhaps be inside during a rainstorm.'

Their silence continued. I could supply Will and Betsy with milk, I thought, and a little cheese and a few pats of butter disappearing into the ferryman's hut would never be noticed. And it was not all bad, for Betsy would keep Will from going to London.

‘Milord and Milady need not even know she is here,' I suggested tentatively.

‘Certainly they must know!' Mr Griffin cut in. ‘But I believe, with Milady's propensity for charitable works, and knowing the child is motherless, she might look favourably on her staying for a while, until alternative arrangements can be made. What do you think, Mrs Bonny?'

‘I suppose the child could sleep in one of the haylofts, with the gardeners' and woodcutters' children,' Mrs Bonny replied.

I nodded eagerly. There was, I knew, a little row of gardeners' cottages on the estate, but these comprised only one room with a sleeping alcove, so a lot of the workers' children slept in one of the barns. Betsy would be a little younger than the others, but this was probably all to the good, for the older girls would want to mother her just as they mothered their little sisters and brothers.

‘And next March when the crops come through she could do a little work,' I said. ‘Perhaps she could go out as a bird-scarer in the fields.'

Mrs Bonny shook her head and frowned. ‘That's nearly a whole year away. Let's hope a proper home has been found for the child by then.'

‘Of course, Mrs Bonny, Mr Griffin,' I said, dropping a curtsey first to her and then the butler and saying how very grateful Will would be, and that he would be sure to take them over the river on the ferry for free whenever they wanted to go. I said I'd wake Betsy, tell her what was happening and take her over to the hayloft.

As it happened, though, I couldn't wake her up; she was in the deep, deep sleep of a child. I was feeling guilty by then because of how I'd not really wanted to take her in, and felt I couldn't just abandon her to wake up in the hayloft, so I took her to my room in the attic and tucked her in at the foot of my bed. I shared a room with Patience and her sister, Prudence, but luckily both of them were asleep by then, so I didn't have to explain anything. The morning, I thought, would be time enough for that.

As I closed my eyes on the whole day I heard the clocks in the house striking midnight. I considered what had happened and what might happen, and then I remembered that Will had told me he loved me, and that it was the first time.

Chapter Five

 

 

‘Why am I here? I don't like it here . . .' This is what I heard when I woke the following morning, and opened my eyes in the semi-darkness to see Betsy at the bottom of my bed, staring over the blanket at Patience and Prudence, who were staring back at her.

‘Who are they?' Betsy asked, her voice trembling.

‘What's she doing here?' Patience asked.

‘Where's she come from?' said Prudence.

Betsy began to cry and I bent over, lifted her up and put her in beside me. I then shot a look at the other two: an imploring, please-don't-make-this-hard look.

‘Well, you know Kate and her family have had to go away for a little while?' I began, explaining it to Patience and Prudence as much as to Betsy, who carried on crying. She didn't say anything, so I continued, ‘Well, they have, and they don't know yet where they're going to be living. When they do find out, I expect they'll send for you, but in the meantime, guess where you're going to live?'

But Betsy didn't want to guess. She carried on crying, while Patience and Prudence got up; one to pour water from the washing jug into the basin and the other to use the chamber pot.

I went on. ‘Well, Mrs Bonny – you like Mrs Bonny, don't you, Betsy? – is going to let you stay here in the hall at night! That is, not exactly inside, but you can sleep in the hay barn with the other children. And there are lovely little field mice in the hay barn. You like mice, don't you?'

Betsy nodded and, after a moment, stopped crying.

‘You could have some as pets. Dear little brown fluffy ones,' I said, hiding a shudder, for I don't like rodents, big or small. ‘And in the daytime you can play down by the river with Will, just as you usually do.'

‘Every day?' she asked.

‘Every single day.'

‘In the rain?' Prudence put in, tipping her bowl of washing water out of the window into the area below. ‘Last May it rained for eighteen days solid.'

‘When it rains,' I said to Betsy, ‘then you can stay in the barn, if you wish, and play with the other children.'

‘And will I see Miss Alice and Miss Sophia?'

‘Indeed you will,' I said. ‘You will glimpse them about the place, and whenever they go riding they will come close to the barn and you will see what elegant outfits they are wearing.'

There was a snort from Prudence, for neither of the maids had any truck with the Misses (although you would never know it from all the curtseying and fawning that went on whenever they appeared).

‘Now, you and I will wash our hands and faces and get dressed,' I continued to Betsy. ‘Then we'll go and say good morning to Mrs Bonny and Mr Griffin. After that, I'll take you across the yard so you can see all the other children and find a little corner to sleep in.'

Betsy seemed to absorb all this information – at least, she didn't start crying again. After a moment or two, however, she asked about Will.

‘He's at the river with his ferry as usual,' I answered. ‘And you can go down and see him whenever you like.'

‘Right now?'

‘As soon as you've had some breakfast,' I said. ‘And if you come into my dairy I'll draw you some fresh milk straight from the cow. You can have milk from Daisy, if you like.'

Patience and Prudence were dressed now, but still staring.

‘So your sweetheart has landed you with a child,' Prudence said, clearly amused.

‘But not in the usual way!' her sister giggled.

‘There was nothing else to be done,' I said in a low voice. ‘Will is going to take care of Betsy during the day and Mrs Bonny is allowing her to sleep in the barn at night. She's no more than a bairn!' I added, hoping to draw on their sympathy. ‘I hope everyone will treat her kindly.'

‘Well, it's a hard life for all of us,' Prudence said briskly. ‘When our pa died, Ma had our Tommy 'prenticed as a climbing boy. Up the chimneys he used to go, fast as a weevil, and he only seven years old!'

‘And I started my working life when I was eight – Ma used to send me out every morning to whiten the front steps of houses,' said Patience.

‘Betsy is but four!' I said, taking a year off her age.

I explained to Betsy that I had to work every single day so wouldn't be able to spend a lot of time playing with her, and after we'd visited the barn, Will arrived to collect her for the day. While he spoke very humbly and thankfully to Mrs Bonny and Mr Griffin, I got on with my milking so that I could send him and Betsy on their way with a can of still-warm milk and some of the previous day's butter.

 

In the days following, we got into a routine. In the mornings Betsy would go off to the river on her own, carrying a little parcel containing whatever I'd found for them to eat that day, while I stood outside the dairy, watching her running across the fields, turning every ten yards or so to wave to me. Smaller and smaller, deeper in the grass she got, until she reached the river, then she and Will would both turn and wave as a signal that she'd arrived safely. Sometimes, if the weather was bad, she would stay in the barn with the other children, but mostly she would choose to go down to the river and be with Will. In the evenings, after they had eaten, Will would either bring Betsy back to the house or, if he was busy with passengers, she would run up to me on her own.

Several weeks after she'd first come to live at the hall, something a little unusual happened. I was some distance from the house and shooing my cows down to the bottom pasture after their afternoon milking, when Miss Sophia came out of the gate to the kitchen garden, dressed very nicely in a gown of spotted muslin with a hat covered in soft veiling.

Hoping that she would be reminded that she had not yet thanked me properly for my part in the
tableau
, I made more of a fuss of the cows than usual, calling them my pretties, patting and cajoling them. When Miss Sophia approached and addressed me, I acted as if I hadn't known she was there.

‘Kitty!' she said. ‘Have you a moment?'

‘Oh! Of course, miss,' I said, and I gave the final cow, Clover, a slap on the rear which sent her trotting through to the pasture, then shut the gate behind her.

‘Can you tell me if there's a quick way to the village through here?' she asked, pointing ahead of us towards the green lane through the woods.

I nodded. ‘It's likely to be rather muddy in wet weather, though, miss – and we've had rain recently,' I said, wondering why she wasn't using the gig to go to the village.

‘Oh, I hadn't thought of that.' She looked down at her pretty sandals.

‘Shall I run back to the house and get more suitable footwear for you, miss? I could ask Christina –'

‘No!' she said very abruptly. Then she softened it to: ‘No, that's quite all right, Kitty. I'm late already and I don't want to . . . to trouble anyone.'

‘I see, miss,' I said, thinking it was more likely that she didn't want anyone to know that she was going out.

She flounced her gown a little. ‘I'll just go along here and hope there aren't too many puddles.'

‘As you wish, miss,' I said and curtseyed.

She went on her way with not a murmur of thanks nor a mention of the
tableau
, even though I'd worked so hard on getting Daisy prepared. I was to discover later that Miss had much more on her mind just then than a South Devons cow.