The Wanderers of the Water-Realm (15 page)

“You worked well enough today, lass,” he commented, “you can count on the skivvying job as being yours, if you still want it? But first tell me a bit about yourself, for I’ve never seen your face around here before and I wouldn’t care to find myself employing someone who’s known to the Constabulary!”

Hetty smiled to herself, for she had anticipated the possibility of being asked to account for her origins and had taken the precaution of concocting a plausible story.

“Please sir; I am a respectable working widow.” She said, bowing her head. “My husband was a labourer working in one of the quarries above Kendal, but he was killed in a rock fall over a year ago. Havin’no close kinfolk, I had no choice but to leave my home village and seek work elsewhere.”

Simister nodded sympathetically, appearing to be satisfied with her explanation, for dispossessed country women were often found seeking work in the factories and households around Manchester.

“Very well,” He said. “You may continue here. You may also bed down above the vegetable store along with Mary-Helen, if you have no adequate lodgings. You will be paid four shillings per week and you may eat your fill of the left-over’s from the kitchen. Now I bid you goodnight.”

The gaffer clamped a bowler hat upon his ample head, locked the door of the kitchen and then disappeared into the darkness.

Marsie’took the wisewoman by the hand and led her across the courtyard to a small storehouse lying against the boundary wall. The building had evidently been originally intended as a stable, for the girl led Hetty up an external staircase and into a disused hay-loft that had once held the provender for the animals below.

The young woman lit a candle and the witch was able to make out pair of straw filled pelisses, two rickety chairs and an upturned box that evidently served as a table.

“Aint’no palace,” the cockney woman remarked, “but I’ve cleaned the place up and no rats get up this far. It gets cold at night, right enough. But we’re not short of blankets and I reckon that hundreds of homeless folk around Manchester would give a year of their lives to be as well fixed up as we are this night.”

Marsie’ removed a cloth from the top of the cane basket that she was carrying and drew out a pair of steaming hot beef puddings, a fruit pie and a bottle of warm black tea.

“Best thing about working in a kitchen,” she said with a laugh. “Is that you aint’ likely to starve, and old Simister isn’t above turning a blind eye if we take a bit of good stuff along with the slops. Now get stuck in before this lot gets cold and then we had best get under the blankets and catch some sleep. For we have to get the grates cleaned out and the fires lit before half past five in the mornin.’Aye, and god help us if the ovens aint’ hot when the cooks arrive for work at six o’clock sharp!”

Hetty quickly became accustomed to the routine of the kitchen in the days following her arrival. The work was hard and the long hours of unremitting toil often brought her to the point of almost complete exhaustion. Even a good night’s sleep was sometimes difficult to obtain, for the unheated hay-loft was cold and draughty. One evening, the temperature suddenly plummeted and the two women had been forced to pile all of the available blankets onto a single pelisse and spend the night clinging together for warmth.

Marsie’ however, proved to be an excellent workmate, for she was invariably good humoured and possessed all of the irrepressible wit of her cockney ancestors.

The girl would always crack a joke when the drudgery of the kitchen became unbearable and Hetty’s face would then contort with silent laughter.

The eating house, she soon discovered, was closed on Sunday and the operatives were relieved of their duties for the day. On her first free Sunday, the wisewoman walked through the quiet streets until she came to a boat-chandler’s store that was situated on the banks of the Rochdale Canal. The owner, it was said, often allowed his premises to be used as a postal accommodation address by the itinerant boat crews who plied the waterway for the payment of a small fee.

The establishment was closed, but the proprietor responded to the wisewoman’s knocking and after a short bout of haggling, the man agreed to receive and hold her mail for the sum of three pence per week. The wisewoman’s inner-eye warned her that the chandler was shifty and unreliable, but she desperately needed to keep in touch with Elfencot so had little choice but to reluctantly trust in the man’s honesty. However, she took the precaution of giving her name as Hetty Walters, rather than Littlewood, and she also resolved to make sure that she was always alone and unobserved whenever visiting the store.

Hetty had been working in the restaurant for almost a fortnight before she set eyes upon Joe Pasco, the official owner of the establishment.

The man had entered the kitchen about midmorning in the company of Mr Simister and began giving the workplace and its edible products, a rapid and far from searching examination.

None of the operatives dared to pause for a moment as they worked under the eye of the proprietor. Yet the witch had no difficulty in observing the man out of the corner of her eye, and she was soon able to make a tentative evaluation of both his character and his appearance.

Joe Pasco was tall, being over six feet in height, and possessed a lean and athletic build that would have done justice to a professional sportsman. In addition, a shock of shining blonde hair fell almost to his shoulders and his unusually loose hairstyle tended to act as a backdrop to his remarkably handsome features.

‘Indeed, a man born to turn the heads of the ladies.’ The wisewoman concluded.

But she also noticed that the man’s shallow blue eyes did not carry that sharp tell-tale glint of intelligence that invariably suggested an advanced intellect; whilst she knew that it would be dangerous to consider Pasco a fool, she was already convinced that some other person was directing and controlling the growing business empire that bore his name.

‘Aye, someone pulls the strings and makes that handsome puppet dance.’ She thought.

‘Probably his wife Mildred, or perhaps the draymen are quite right and it’s Albert Pike, the fight promoter who owns the property and keeps a firm grip upon the purse-strings.’

The wisewoman kept her eye upon Pasco as he threaded his way between the work benches and she turned her body sideways as he approached, giving the young man an ample opportunity to notice and admire the outline of her breasts.

As she hoped, the man halted before her workstation.

“You’re new here!” He exclaimed. “I hope that you find the work to your liking?”

Hetty smiled at him before dropping her gaze.

“Yes indeed sir.” She replied. “And I wish to express my deepest gratitude for the opportunity to earn my bread. Life can be hard for a poor woman such as myself.”

Pasco rapped the top of the work bench with his walking stick.

“In that case woman,” he replied sternly. “See that you carry out your tasks diligently, and continue to obey the commands of your masters and then you can be assured that you will continue to receive our support!”

Joe Pasco disappeared into the dining room and the wisewoman almost laughed aloud.

‘It certainly doesn’t take much to set that young stallion sniffing around a woman’s skirts.’ She thought. ‘Aye and I’ll bet a pound to a shilling that not many days will pass before he tries to get between my thighs. Well, all to the good, I might as well play that young treasure along and see if he leads me to something interesting.’

Only four days elapsed before Pasco again visited the kitchen, and on this occasion he lingered for a few minutes in the vicinity of Hetty’s work bench; ostensibly testing the quality of a batch of pies that were being prepared to a new recipe, but the wisewoman knew instinctively that her employer was using this task as a pretext for gaining a closer and clearer view of her body. She stretched even further across the top of the work bench, as she kneaded a mound of suet dough, thus tightening the rear of her skirt and further accentuating the curve of her shapely buttocks.

‘Take a good look you bloody ram.’ She thought as she stretched out and pummelled the dough. ‘Get yourself good and randy and then let’s see what you try to do about it.’

Hetty did not have to wait long to discover to result of her womanly ruse, for the following morning, Simister strode across the kitchen and addressed the two women as they toiled at their work bench.

“See here ladies.” He said. “Mr Pasco has instructed me to offer you both the opportunity to wait-on, part time, in the dining room. You will work in the kitchen in the mornings and relieve some of the dining room staff in the afternoon. You won’t receive any increase in pay, but you will have the chance of gleaning a few tips and the work is also lighter. Well ladies, what do you both say?”

“Hetty smiled at the young London girl, who appeared to be slightly hesitant.

“Shall we give it a try?” She asked.

Marsie’ nodded. “Swore that I would never wait on table again, after toilin’away me childhood working in one of them boarding houses near Brick Lane. Still, it will give us a break from all that washing up, so let’s say… Yes!”

Mr Simister then instructed the two women to be washed and presentable by a quarter past twelve, and then report to the head waiter who would assign them to their new duties.

‘So Pasco thinks enough of me and Marsie’to grace us with a small promotion.’

The wisewoman pondered, as she returned to making suet dumplings. ‘Yet I wonder if a good tumble is all that he expects in return? Or has he another reason? However, time will tell, of that there can be no doubt!’

Waiting upon tables in a public dining room was a new experience for Hetty. But Marsie’ nursed her companion through the first few days until she became fully conversant with the work, and she even began to enjoy the interlude from the drudgery of the kitchen.

The two newcomers, now dressed in clean white linen aprons, had begun their new careers by waiting upon the rows of benches and tables that ran along the rear wall of the dining room and only brought into use when the lunchtime trade was at its frantic height. The normal clientele, Hetty soon discovered, were the young clerks and tellers who worked in the surrounding offices and warehouses. The young men could normally afford to dine in the restaurant once or twice a week, and they were invariably a merry crowd, for a hot beef pudding with vegetables was frequently the high point of their working week.

A smaller number were senior clerks and various types of commission agents, who dined on a daily basis; whilst a handful of the diners were the sons and close relatives of factory and warehouse owners, residing in the city whilst being taught the skills of management. The latter invariably occupied the best tables and were far more fashionably dressed than their more lowly colleagues who sat upon the rear benches.These privileged diners often ordered expensive none standard items from the kitchen, such as beefsteak, fresh oysters and port wine. Yet even the ones known to be heirs to substantial fortunes had to quit the restaurant in haste when their lunch break drew to a close, for the discipline of the mills and trading houses was strict and extreme punctuality was required of everyone.