Whispers (7 page)

Beneath another dust-sheet she unearthed a set of six matching ladder-back chairs. One of them was wobbling dangerously and the seats were in dire need of re-upholstering, but even so Jess fell in love with them and vowed to restore them to their former glory. She knew that they would look superb in the dining room. She just hoped now that she might be lucky enough to come across the table they belonged to.

Another half an hour and a lot of rummaging later, she came to a smaller wooden chest with metal straps around it set beneath the eaves. She had to drop onto her knees to drag it towards her, causing a storm of dust to make her cough, but at last she managed it. The lid was stiff, and despite her best efforts she was beginning to think that she would have to wait until she could get Simon to force it open for her, but then the heavy brass hinges suddenly squealed in protest and slowly but surely the lid creaked open.

This time she found herself staring down at a number of crudely bound leather books. They certainly didn’t appear to be of any value but all the same, Jess was consumed with curiosity as she lifted one out and blew the dust from its cover.

Opening it to the first page she read,
This Journal belongs to Martha Reid
. The handwriting was neat and now Jess became excited. The sampler she had found in the servant’s room where the clothes still hung had been embroidered with the name
Martha
, and she wondered if this was the same girl’s journal. Curious to find out, she tucked it under her arm and headed for the door where she hastily snapped off the light and hurried downstairs, the shopping trip ignored for now.

Jess made herself a large pot of tea and after plonking it on a tray with some custard creams, she headed for the drawing room where she curled up on the sofa and opened the journal to the first page.

The first entry was dated 20 June 1837. And as Jess read on through
the
painstakingly written pages, splotched with blots and sprays of faded ink, she was transported back in time . . .

Today I, Martha Reid, am seventeen years old. This book is a birthday present from my Granny Reid and from now I shall try to find a little time each day to write my journal in it, with my best grammer and handwriting. I know that I am fortunate to be able to write, as most of the staff that work here are only able to make their mark with a cross. But Granny had been taught how to read by the vicar before she married my grandad, in return for cleaning and baking for him, and she has taught me and my sister Grace our letters and how to do sums for as long as I can remember. My birthday has been slightly marred as word has reached us that today our King, King William VI, has died at Windsor at the age of 71 years. Princess Victoria, who is only one year older than me, will now become Queen of Great Britain and Ireland. It is strange to think that a girl of about my age should have so much responsibility placed upon her shoulders. My life is hard, and yet I am blessed, for I have Grace and my Granny Reid to look out for me. Until three years ago we had our own little cottage in Mancetter, which was tied to the pit our father worked in. Our mother died in childbirth some years ago, and sadly I only have vague memories of her, and then when Da was killed in a pitfall we had to leave our home. Thankfully, we were then taken on by Master Fenton and we came to live here. I know that we are fortunate that Master Fenton allows us to live in Stonebridge House but I do sometimes wish that he was a kinder master. Our granny is now very old, at least sixty years, so I believe, and I think sometimes that the kitchen work is becoming too much for her. Granny and I and Grace have rooms in the attic. They are freezing cold in the winter and unbearably hot in the summer. In the autumn when Grace marries her Bertie they will live in the accommodation above the stable, and the room that I now share with my sister will become all mine. Grace is the chambermaid and the scullerymaid, I am the kitchenmaid and Granny is the cook. Bertie is the groom, and I think that he and Grace love each other very much. I am quite envious of them sometimes and wonder if I shall ever meet a boy I will fall in love with. Granny tells me to be thankful for what I’ve got, but I cannot help but dream.
Besides
us, another family called the Tolleys live in a cottage in the grounds. Phoebe and Hal Tolley have four boys and they also all work for the Master. Hal and the boys do all the jobs about the place as well as tending to the gardens, and Phoebe does the laundry work.

Today the tinker called by and Grace bought me a red velvet ribbon which I shall wear in my hair when I go to the fair on Saturday. It is presently in the Pingles Fields in Coton. I am going with Grace and Bertie, but Granny has warned me not to spend all my hard-earned pennies on fripperies. It is all right for her, she is an old woman, but I like to look nice on my afternoons off. I went to the fair last year and greatly enjoyed it. The only thing I didn’t like was the great brown bear who was shackled to the ground with chains about his ankles. His eyes were sad, and I felt sorry for him. People were poking him with sticks to make him roar and I thought they were cruel.

I shall have to close now to go about my duties. Master Fenton has visitors arriving later today and I must help to prepare their rooms. Granny says they will no doubt be gambling in the study until the early hours of the morning as usual and so she will probably have to stay up too, to serve them drinks and food. She worries about the Master since the Mistress left him earlier in the year. She says it’s a wonder his flour mill in Attleborough hasn’t gone under because he is hardly ever there to run it properly now, but Bertie said the Master had a good manager in charge there. Bertie doesn’t feel sorry for the Master, in fact he said it served him right that the Mistress had gone because of the way he treated her, and that it was a good thing they were childless. Maybe that’s why the Master plays the fool: he might have wanted an heir. I miss the Mistress. She was kind. Sometimes she would give Grace and me her cast-off gowns, and Granny would alter them to fit us. Rumour has it that the Mistress has returned to live with her parents at their country estate in Shropshire and that she will never return. I hope they are wrong. The house is not the same without her.

As Jess gently closed the book on Martha’s first entry a shudder rippled through her despite the heat that wafted in through the open French doors. She knew she should share the journal with Simon, but she felt
strangely
reluctant to do so. It was as if she had discovered something very precious and for now she wanted to keep it to herself. After carrying the book up to her bedroom she went about her chores, but her heart wasn’t in them now. She just wanted it to be bedtime so that she could read some more of the young maid’s past. It was incredible to think that Martha had once known every room in this house just as she herself now did, and Jess was intrigued to read on and discover more about the girl’s life.

Beth arrived on the kitchen doorstep later in the afternoon and Jess beckoned her inside where she was preparing a large bowl of salad to accompany the cooked ham they were going to have for their evening meal. Beth looked eagerly around the kitchen, the smile on her face as bright as an electric light bulb as she asked expectantly, ‘S . . . Simon?’

‘Sorry, sweetheart. Simon is still at work, and he’s likely to be late back this evening. He has a very big job on and he’s trying to get as much done as he can whilst the weather is still on his side.’ Seeing the girl’s crestfallen expression, she suggested, ‘Why don’t you take Alfie for a little walk around the lawn? He gets very lonely while Jo is at school and he loves to see you.’

Slightly more cheerful again, Beth instantly rose, and seconds later she flew out of the door with Alfie following close behind, his tail wagging joyfully.

The rest of the day passed uneventfully. Jess postponed her trip into town, intending to go the next day, and Simon arrived home late as she had expected, tired and more than a little frazzled. ‘I reckon I’ll have a soak in the bath and turn in, if you don’t mind,’ he said after he’d eaten his meal. ‘I’ve got another early start tomorrow and I’m all in.’

Jess was secretly relieved, and once he was fast asleep in bed she slipped in at the side of him and took Martha’s book from the drawer. Within no time at all everything else faded away as she was drawn back into the early summer of 1837 . . .

June 24

Despite all my good intentions, this is the first day I have had time to write anything in my book since Granny Reid gave it to me on my birthday. The Master’s friends arrived later that day as expected and stayed for three whole days, during which time
we
were all run off our feet seeing to their needs. Granny is none too pleased at all with the way they have conducted themselves . . .

‘I don’t know.’ Granny Reid pushed a strand of greying hair from her forehead as she placed a damp huckaback cloth over the dough and left it to rise. ‘This place is gettin’ to be little better than a bawdy-house, wi’ all the Master’s goin’s-on.’ She clapped her hands, sending a cloud of flour into the hot kitchen. ‘Thank the Lord the poor Mistress left when she did. I wonder the poor lamb stuck ’im for as long as she did.’

Grace and Martha exchanged an amused glance as the older woman shuffled away to the oven to check the goose that was cooking in it. They knew what their granny was like when she got a bee in her bonnet about the Master.

‘An’ has the wine arrived yet? I ordered it two days ago.’

‘Not yet,’ Grace answered.

‘Huh! Happen it won’t neither.’ Granny Reid tutted. ‘If he don’t settle some of his bills soon, we’re goin’ to have to go further afield for supplies. Hammond’s in town nearly shut the door in poor Bertie’s face when he took the last order in, an’ they told him there’ll be no more till the accounts is settled.’

Bertie, who was sitting at the kitchen table eating his lunch, nodded in confirmation.

‘They did that, an’ so did Lumley’s,’ he said. ‘The Master’s bills are as long as yer arm, but when I told him what they’d said, you’d have thought it were
me
as had run the bills up.’ He bit into a thick slice of bread and cheese. ‘An’ I’m tellin’ you now,’ he mumbled, ‘the wine in the cellar is almost gone. Lord knows what he’ll do when his guests turn up tonight if it don’t arrive. No doubt that’ll be
my
fault, an’ all.’

‘How can it be your fault?’ Grace said protectively. ‘An’ what guests are these? You mean to say there are yet
more
comin’?’

Bertie nodded. Lowering his voice and leaning towards them, he said, ‘Aye, there are ladies from the brothel in town comin’ to entertain ’em, from what I overheard the Master tellin’ his cronies.’

‘God above!’ Granny Reid quickly crossed herself as she wiped her hands on her apron. ‘Didn’t I tell you this place were becomin’ a den o’ vice? That lot in there ain’t stopped drinkin’ an’ gamblin’ since they arrived, an’ now this. Huh! It’s a fair disgrace, so it is. Martha – I
want
you to keep as far away from ’em as yer can. I don’t want the likes o’ them mixin’ wi’ my girls. Do you hear me?’ She shook a large wooden spoon at Martha as the girl nodded mutely then turning back to Bertie she demanded, ‘An’ are these women goin’ to be stayin’ over? If they are, we’ll have to get some more bedrooms ready.’

‘I can only assume so,’ Bertie muttered.

Granny Reid stared off through the window towards the lake. ‘It’ll be his mill in Attleborough goin’ under next,’ she said worriedly. ‘An’ if he loses that, what will become of us? He may only pay us a meagre wage, but at least we have a roof over us heads an’ food in our bellies.’

‘Now Granny, don’t get thinkin’ the worst,’ Grace soothed as she placed her arm about the woman’s slight shoulders. ‘I’m sure it won’t come to that. The Master has a good manager at the mill, doesn’t he, Bertie?’

‘Aye, he does,’ Bertie agreed. ‘The problem is, if the Master doesn’t order in the stuff to keep the mill workin’, then even the best manager in the world can’t keep the place runnin’ on fresh air.’

‘Well, happen this ain’t the time to be frettin’ about it,’ Granny now stated matter-of-factly. She ran her kitchen with military precision and even now when she was sorely vexed at the goings-on around her she had no intentions of letting her standards slip. ‘Martha, you go and start to set the table in the dinin’ room, an’ you, Grace, help me to get these vegetables dished up. Happen all we can do is cross each bridge as we come to it.’

Lifting her long brown calico skirt, Martha scuttled away to do as she was told.

At seven o’clock that evening, a carriage pulled up outside and four women emerged, eyeing the house with interest.

‘Just look at the state of ’em,’ Granny Reid said scathingly, as she spied on them from the hall window. ‘If their dresses were cut any lower, their titties would fall out of ’em, so they would. An’ would yer just
look
at their painted faces.’

‘Shush an’ come away to the kitchen,’ Martha urged as she took the woman’s elbow. ‘The Master will skin us alive if he catches us gawpin’.’

Once back in the sanctuary of the kitchen they found Grace busily working on a length of fine blue satin that the Mistress had left behind. She had found it in the loft and the Master had told her she might have it, so now she spent every spare minute, which were few and far
between,
transforming it into her wedding dress for when she married Bertie.

‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ she sighed. They had just finished washing up all the dinner pots and now had a little spare time before they had to start the supper for the Master and his guests, and Grace didn’t intend to waste a second of it.

‘It is that,’ Martha said. She adored her older sister for her kind and gentle ways, and would gladly have laid down her life for her, if need be.

Glancing up, she found Granny staring at her. ‘You look worn out,’ the old lady commented as she finished polishing one of the huge copper pans before hanging it with the others above the enormous range. ‘Why don’t you away and get an early night, love? Me an’ Grace can see to the supper. The vegetables are all ready, an’ I only have to slice the cold meats. Everythin’ should run smooth now that the wine order ’as arrived. Happen his lordship will be in a better frame o’ mind now.’