The Flight of Swallows Page 13

  On this particular day Miss Seddon was occupied for a moment, but her assistant, who popped her head out of her own classroom, told her she would not be long and would Mrs Armstrong be good enough to wait in the hallway.

  Miss Seddon could be seen talking earnestly to a girl who sat blubbering on the other side of her desk then, with a speed that bemused Charlotte, the girl sprang up, raced from the room and darted back down the passage to where Charlotte imagined the kitchen, if such existed, would be.

  Miss Seddon stood up and came to the door, somewhat discomposed, and ushered her into her office. ‘I am so sorry to keep you waiting since I know you wish to discuss your brother’s progress. Do sit down. Now, Robert has become quite an asset to his class, Mrs Armstrong. He is a lively, imaginative boy and invents many games for the others to play. In this cold weather especially’ – she shivered inside her rather thin grey coat – ‘they have to keep on the move at playtime and I believe they are playing King Solomon’s Mines of which they have never heard and Robbie, in the part of the hero, is fighting the natives. It is the children’s admiration for him that has given him confidence and I believe when he moves on to public school he will cope very well. Now, if you don’t mind, perhaps a cup of tea. I have a certain matter I must attend to and then I will return to continue our discussion.’

  Charlotte was quite taken aback, for Miss Seddon did not appear to be quite herself, watching as she vanished up the passageway following the distraught girl.

  It took only ten minutes for the matter Miss Seddon spoke of to be completed then she returned and sat down by the tiny flickering flame of her fire, drawing her coat about her. ‘Very sad, very sad,’ she was murmuring. ‘These girls have a chance to make something more of themselves than their mothers did but they . . .’ She shook her head and sighed.

  ‘What is it, Miss Seddon?’ Charlotte leaned forward and placed the lukewarm and very weak cup of tea on the desk.

  ‘This particular girl could finish her education and then move on to her first job as a scullery-maid in a wool merchant’s home on the outskirts of Halifax. Not much, but a decent start in life,’ Miss Seddon told her, then watched with consternation, as did Charlotte, when the girl, a tall girl but plumper than would be expected, came from the back of the school and hurried along the passage towards the front door and out into the village street. She was weeping. Charlotte stood up and watched her go, wondering what Miss Seddon had said to upset her so.

  Miss Seddon, looking even more distraught, invited Charlotte to re-seat herself. It was cold, for the only heat in the building was in the big schoolroom and the poor excuse for a fire in the fireplace of Miss Seddon’s office. Their breath could clearly be seen about their mouths and Charlotte made up her mind then and there to do something about it.

  ‘Anyway, to return to Robert,’ Miss Seddon said. ‘As I say I’m happy to tell you he is doing well and next term I am going to try him in the big class. He seems to have settled down and though he was behind the others of his age when he came he has caught up. He is happy, you see, and I believe that a happy child will flourish. I think that his . . . background’ – she was trying to be diplomatic, for Arthur Drummond’s reputation as a hard man was well known in Overton – ‘has held him back. His friends here at the school are all . . . all from stable homes, from families where they know they are . . . well, I will say no more except he is doing well. I know he is to join his brothers at public school when he is old enough but he will be ready then to leave the . . . the safety of your love and support. He tells me they were all at King’s Meadow at Christmas, his older brothers, I mean, and that you had a wizard time.’ She smiled. ‘His words. He is becoming a—’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Miss Seddon,’ Charlotte said somewhat impatiently, for she could not get the picture of the anguished young girl she had seen running from the school out of her mind and she was eager to know who she was and what the trouble was, though anyone with eyes in her head could see the girl was with child.

  Miss Seddon blinked, since Mrs Armstrong was usually very keen to talk about her brother and after all that was why she was here, interrupting Miss Seddon’s class which had been left in the charge of her monitor.

  ‘Yes, Mrs Armstrong?’

  ‘That young girl who ran from your office as I came in. Is she to have a baby? She seems very young and I was wondering . . .’

  ‘Yes, very sad. She is a pupil, or was. She has been a naughty girl and I was forced to ask her to leave. The parents of my pupils are . . . well, you know the sort of problems this causes.’

  ‘What sort of thing, Miss Seddon? Surely but for the grace of God go you and me.’

  Miss Seddon looked vastly offended. ‘Mrs Armstrong, I cannot believe you said that. Ruth Hardacre comes from a decent family but they are horrified at what has befallen her and have turned her out. She came to me for help.’

  ‘Which you refused her.’

  ‘I have no way to help her, Mrs Armstrong. This is a school not a home for fallen girls. I must think of my pupils. There is nowhere . . . nothing to be done here. I must think of the good of—’

  ‘Where has she gone?’ Charlotte rose to her feet imperiously and Miss Seddon, though she had a good heart and would help if she could, knew that Mrs Armstrong was not pleased with her.

  ‘I told her there was a home for girls in her situation in Wakefield. There is a lying-in place for when she is brought to bed or they would take her in at the workhouse.’

  ‘Where has she gone now, Miss Seddon, if you please? When she ran out of here where was she headed?’

  ‘The river, she said, but of course she did not mean it.’

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Fourteen.’

  ‘There is no river, Miss Seddon.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Armstrong but I have a school here which is my responsibility and I can assure you if I could have helped the girl I would but . . .’ Miss Seddon was genuinely sorry and very flustered, for at heart she was a kind woman. ‘There is the reservoir off Moss Lane but I’m sure she did not really mean it.’

  ‘Would you care to risk it, Miss Seddon, because I wouldn’t,’ and before Miss Seddon, almost weeping by now, could answer Charlotte whirled round and flew from the office and out to her gig. The patient little pony, which often drew the mower but was now elevated to pulling the gig, turned his head and whickered in welcome and when she flung herself in the gig, set off at a spanking speed along Moss Lane, having enjoyed the mouthfuls of grass he had managed to garner from the strip of vegetation in front of the school. The reservoir was on the right of the lane and even from the gig Charlotte could see that there was a thin film of ice on it. She jumped from the still moving vehicle and ran across the strip of field that divided it from the lane and was just in time to see the figure of the girl step out on to the ice and vanish beneath it.

  Without thought she jumped in and grasped the girl’s hair which appeared on the surface and with a great heave and a lot of rude words she had heard in her father’s stables, pulled viciously until the girl, who had begun instinctively to help herself, for the mindless clinging to life was in us all, clambered on to the bank.

  ‘You great gormless beggar. There is no reason for you to drown yourself and if we don’t get you, and me, back home we’ll both catch our deaths.’

  ‘Yer shoulda left me,’ the girl mumbled.

  They were both shivering and Charlotte knew that they must get home as soon as possible. With her arm round the girl she dragged her, stumbling, to the gig where the pony waited for instructions. She shoved the girl, dripping and shivering, into the gig and with a quivering ‘Get up, Misty,’ she set off in the direction of King’s Meadow.

  Kizzie did not bother asking questions! This was another of Miss Charlotte’s lame ducks, pregnant like the other and she wondered how many more they would have before the master put his foot down. Ruth sat in front of the roaring fire, wearing one of Jenny’s capacious nightgowns, spooning bro
th into her mouth. She had been put in the bath, which had filled her with awe and had been struck speechless by the splendour of it all and by her luck in landing up here. She was not pretty like Jenny who was hovering round her like a mother hen, urging her to eat up but she was plump and good-natured and simple. She had obviously attracted the attention of some man several months ago but when asked who it was she could not remember.

  ‘There were a couple who give me a bob or two, worked at colliery wi’ me pa. Nice chaps,’ she told them equably, causing Kizzie and Jenny to exchange glances, for at least Jenny had been in love with the gentleman who had seduced her. Ruth was evidently not a full shilling, in Kizzie’s opinion, and when Miss Charlotte came over, after having a hot bath and dressed in a warm woollen gown and her good winter cloak, they sat and looked at this girl who had somehow fallen into their care.

  The kitchen was in an uproar, Charlotte said, and when she had spoken sharply to them they had turned sullen.

  ‘Mrs Armstrong, ma’am,’ Mrs Dickinson had begun, clearly on her high horse. ‘We’re all that sorry for these girls what get themselves into trouble, though I must say an’ t’others agree with me that they’ve only theirselves ter blame. None of my girls’d dream of allowin’ any man ter interfere wi’ them . . .’ Mrs Dickinson was losing her grasp on the rather high-toned way of speaking on which she prided herself.

  ‘Your girls have a steady job and a safe place of work, Mrs Dickinson. They know that their lives are sheltered and that people care about them. You care about them. Mrs Groves cares about them. This is a good place to work and I should think you would be ashamed of yourself for the unchristian way you treat Jenny and Ruth.’

  ‘Ruth, is it?’ Mrs Dickinson tossed her head but Charlotte walked out of the kitchen with her own head held imperiously high and what Mrs Dickinson had to say on the subject of Ruth was lost.

  Ruth was not as personable as Jenny, in fact she was rather coarse. She had kicked up a fuss and caused a great deal of trouble by flinging herself dramatically in the reservoir, but that was not all. She was heard to say in Kizzie’s hearing, though she didn’t know Kizzie was listening at the time, that she was made up with her position at the Dower House and it was obvious she was not in the least interested in learning the art of rug-making which Jenny promised to teach her.

  ‘Wha’ for?’ she asked. ‘I like it ’ere wi’ nowt ter do an’ that lad in’t stable’s not ’alf bad. I could earn meself a bob or two if—’

  She was astonished to find her ear caught in the sharp pincers of Kizzie’s fingers.

  ‘D’yer know ’ow lucky you are ’avin’ a good ’ome like this wi’ you in the state yer in, lady? Mrs Armstrong shoulda left yer in bloody reservoir in my opinion an’ if I ’ear yer’ve bin seen ’angin’ about stable lads I’ll ’ave yer outer ’ere afore yer can say “knife”. Is that clear?’

  The next day Ruth had gone and Nellie, in Wakefield on her day off, reported triumphantly she had seen her on the arm of some burly chap, drunk as a lord!

  11

  It had snowed in the night, a light fall which had frozen the moment it touched the ground and the gardens were a silvery delight, sparkling in the winter sunshine, but it was not a morning to linger.

  Charlotte, Kizzie and Jenny were sitting with their knees up to the kitchen fire, the three of them sipping a cup of hot chocolate. Charlotte was complaining that even on the short journey from the big house to the Dower House her nose had gone dead and it hurt her to breathe the air was so cold. Everywhere had been silent on her walk from the back kitchen door – accompanied by the disapproving glances of the servants – through the stable yard, across the vegetable garden to the kitchen door of the Dower House, a strange hard silence as though even the trees, the wintry plants and the animal life that usually rustled about the garden were struck dumb by the iciness of the day.

  The kitchen was full of steam, billowing from kettles and pans, for hot water was needed or would be very soon as Jenny was near her time. She sat in the rocking-chair, full and fecund and rosy, her silvery hair brushed and shining, a very different Jenny to the one who had begged at the back door in the autumn. The fire crackled and leaped up the chimney and Kizzie rose to check the supply of coal in the brass coal scuttle. She was the eldest in her family and was well used to the drama of birth – and death – and she knew quite positively that the girl who sat so placidly opposite her would shortly go into labour. It was an instinct brought about by the occasion of her mother’s yearly confinements. Jenny had been well cared for over the last four months and was strong, sturdy, young and would stand the hard task ahead of her. She was patiently working on one of her rag rugs, in a lovely design, a perfect flower spreading in its centre. She was blending various shades of pink for the petals, two shades of yellow for the centre, worked on a large piece of hessian dyed an attractive blue for the background. The edges of the petals were outlined in black. It was quite exquisite, resembling a pink lotus, each petal shading to a darker pink at its point.

  They were startled when there was a rapid tattoo on the kitchen door and without waiting for one of them to admit her and the door being unlocked, Rosie the scullery-maid burst into the kitchen, her nose like a beacon, her cheeks blazing with the cold, the shawl she had evidently thrown hastily about herself hardly enough for the frozen world through which she had obviously hurried.

  ‘Rosie, what on earth . . .?’ Charlotte began, for it was not often that the servants from the big house came here where the ‘scarlet woman’, meaning poor Jenny, resided.

  ‘Oh, mum, yer ter come at once, if yer please. Mrs Groves’s in a right takin’ an’ ses after all this time an’ on a day like this ’un yer’d think she’d’ve kept to ’er own fireside but ’ere she is, large as life an’—’

  ‘Rosie, what on earth are you talking about? What does Mrs Groves want with me, for goodness sake? Can you not—’

  ‘Oh, please, mum, I’ve not ter stop, Mrs Groves ses, ’cos the kitchen table’s only ’alf scrubbed an’—’

  ‘What . . .’

  But Rosie had turned on her heel and scampered for the door to the passage and was out and dashing across the back yard as though the hounds of hell were at her heels, which to her was what Mrs Groves, who owned her to all intents and purposes, was in the kitchen.

  ‘I’d better go, I suppose,’ Charlotte said doubtfully. ‘To be summoned like this . . . it must be important.’ She reached for her ankle-length fur-lined cape and threw it about herself, then, with a light touch on Jenny’s shoulder, she moved towards the door. ‘I won’t be long,’ she told them because she knew that Kizzie was expecting Jenny’s labour to begin today and needed her help.

  She entered the house by the kitchen door and found the place in an uproar. Mrs Dickinson and Mrs Groves had still not recovered from the sudden, though not unexpected, arrival of the mistress’s three brothers from their school near York at Christmas. Big rowdy lads with appetites to match who had kept them busy from morning until evening, cooking and baking, quite apart from the normal Christmas meals. Mrs Groves said she had never made so many mince pies in her entire life and the Christmas cake, an absolute masterpiece and expected to last until Twelfth Night at least, had been demolished by the end of Boxing Day! And the muck they brought in! Despite the time of the year they had enthusiastically played tennis, would you believe, putting up the net and rattling round on the court until they were scarlet-faced with their exertions. The stumps and bats had been rooted out and they had had a go at cricket on the front lawn and then, with Mr Brooke’s permission, had taken turns on Magic, Max, Misty and Merry and though they had never ridden in their lives owing to their father’s lack of interest in them, they had put up a good performance, or so said Arch who had watched anxiously in case one of his beloved animals should be distressed. The eldest lad, who was apparently called Henry and who was sixteen, had spent the Christmas holidays with a friend in York, but the other three, William, fourteen, John, twelve
and James who was eight had descended on King’s Meadow like a horde of locusts, eating them out of house and home before they had gone back to school. Robbie, excited by the presence of his brothers, had been a real handful and the master, it was plain to see, had been hard pressed to keep his temper.

  Charlotte had been amazed at the difference six months away from their father had achieved. Her brothers had been confident, articulate when round the dinner table and despite their loud and bumptious ways, had become favourites with the servants. They were good boys, polite and obedient, thanks to their father’s upbringing but it was a relief when they returned to school.

  They did not visit their father and he did not invite them!

  ‘It’s Mrs Ackroyd, ma’am,’ hissed Mrs Dickinson now.

  ‘What is?’ Charlotte asked, bewildered.

  ‘She’s come ter call. I’ve put her in the drawin’ room. Well, with you not here I didn’t know what else ter do. Her carriage is on the drive and that coachman of hers must be frozen so I—’

  ‘Oh, bring him in, Mrs Dickinson and give him a hot drink and then I suppose you had better serve something; what do ladies drink?’

  ‘She asked if you were “at home” and really, Mr Johnson didn’t know what to say. We knew you were over there’ – with a contemptuous nod of her head towards the Dower House – ‘so he said you were but were . . . well, he didn’t know what ter say. Yer first caller, you see, and so she—’

  ‘Yes, very well, bring in some . . .’ She was at a loss as to what was the accepted drink at this time of the day.

  ‘Hot chocolate, ma’am?’ Mrs Dickinson ventured.

  ‘Yes, that will be warming on such a cold day. Now, I’d better go in.’