The Servant Girl Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Maggie Hope

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Part Two

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Read on for an extract from The Coal Miner’s Daughter

  Copyright

  About the Book

  She is the downstairs maid; he is the Master’s son . . .

  Forced to become a kitchen maid at Fortune Hall, Hetty Pearson strikes up an unlikely friendship with the younger son of the house, Richard.

  But Hetty is just a poor servant girl: what hope does she have of either winning Richard’s heart or escaping his older brother’s more base attentions?

  About the Author

  Maggie Hope was born and raised in County Durham. She worked as a nurse for many years, before giving up her career to raise her family.

  Also by Maggie Hope:

  A Wartime Nurse

  A Mother’s Gift

  A Nurse’s Duty

  A Daughter’s Gift

  Molly’s War

  To Valerie and Peter

  My thanks are due to Mrs Armstrong of Boulby Grange, also the staff of Saltburn Library for all their help. The work is a product of my imagination and I have combined fact with fiction in describing Saltburn-by-the-Sea and the surrounding area for the sake of the story.

  PART ONE

  Chapter 1

  Hetty Pearson stood by the wrought-iron gates and looked up at the strips of iron tortured into curlicues and bows and dangerous-looking spikes. She changed the straw box containing her few possessions from her left hand to her right and moved from one foot to the other, easing the place where her new shoes had rubbed in the long walk from the station to Fortune Hall.

  Sighing, she looked up at the ironwork again, noting the fancy ‘F’ intertwined with leaves, looking so much like the letters on the lectern cover in the chapel at home and therefore slightly sacrilegious. She missed Morton Main suddenly, acutely; it was a pain so sharp it sliced through her and she would have turned round and gone straight back to the station except that she knew she didn’t have enough money for a ticket.

  ‘You’re fourteen now, pet,’ Mam had said as they stood on the station at Bishop Auckland, only that same morning it had been but it felt like aeons ago. ‘Howay now, be a good lass, don’t get upset. You know you’re lucky to get a place so near, only the North Riding after all. You might have had to go south, think of that. Lots of girls do.’

  ‘I’m all right, Mam,’ Hetty had said.

  Maggie Pearson gazed at her daughter who’d looked anything but all right, her face, so white beneath her mop of dark hair, and body as thin as a skinned rabbit. There was a hunted look in her eyes too, like a rabbit’s. Maggie pushed the thought from her for though she felt like gathering Hetty to her and running out of the station and along the path to the bus stop where the bus would be turning round to go back to the village, she knew she had to try to send Hetty on her way cheerfully.

  ‘Look now, it’s farming country, you’ll have meat every day. You’ll come home with roses in your cheeks and fat as butter,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t want to get fat,’ said Hetty. She didn’t want to talk about where she was going, she wanted to remind her mother that Cissy wouldn’t go to sleep if she wasn’t told a story first. Cissy was just a baby, not yet three, and she liked the story about the fairy who lived in the shed in the garden best. But the train was coming in, there was no time for anything else but a hug and then she was on the train and waving to her mother whose face was suspiciously red as she dabbed her eyes under the brim of her shabby black straw hat.

  ‘Write every week now, won’t you, pet?’ Mam called.

  ‘I will,’ promised Hetty, and it was all she could say for she was too full of panic now that the time had come and she was actually leaving.

  ‘An’ do what you’re told, be a good lass now.’

  The train was pulling out and Mam was a forlorn figure in a shabby straw hat and down-at-heel shoes, getting smaller and smaller, and then she disappeared altogether. Hetty settled back into her seat and stared fixedly out of the window, willing herself not to cry. She took out the letter which had come with the postal order for her fare to Yorkshire and instructions for the walk from the station to Fortune Hall.

  She read the letter again as she stood outside the locked gates on the lonely moor. Maybe she had made a mistake, maybe this wasn’t the place at all. Wasn’t it supposed to be a working form? Here there was just a drive curving round a small copse, not a house in sight. And anyway, there was a heavy chain on the gate fastened with a padlock and no sign of anyone to unlock it.

  ‘You’ll have to ring the bell if you want to get in that way.’ The voice came from behind her, unnerving her, making her jump. She turned to find her eyes in line with the finest pair of boots she had ever seen and she stepped back, bumping into the gates. There was a boy on a horse, a great horse, bigger than the cart horse old Mr Gibson had to draw his butcher’s cart at home. It pranced a little and snorted and she watched it warily, not taking her eyes from it to give its rider more than a quick glance. He was young, not much older than she was, thin and tall with a freckled face and light brown hair sticking to his forehead under his riding hat.

  ‘Walk around the wall, you’ll come to the main entrance,’ he advised her. He wheeled his horse away without more ado and cantered over the moor. He might have showed her where, she thought tiredly, picking up her box and beginning the trudge round the eight-foot-high wall. It went on and on. Surely the whole farm wasn’t walled in? She had to dodge overhanging branches, sycamore and elm mostly, and further on a stand of ash. She was just beginning to think the wall encircled the whole moor never mind the farm when all unexpectedly she came to a gate, not half so imposing as the first one but open and with a gatehouse to one side. A small man in old-fashioned breeches and braces over his collarless shirt stopped raking the gravel path in front of the cottage and leaned on his rake, surveying her up and down.

  ‘I reckon you must be the new lass for t’house,’ he said. ‘Not afore time neither. You’re late.’

  ‘I had to walk from the station,’ said Hetty. ‘Then I went to the wrong gate.’ She stood waiting. Though it was already September and there was a cold wind blowing across the moor, she felt hot and tired.

  The man propped his rake by the wall and pushed his cap back on his head. ‘Well then,’ he said, ‘I reckon you’ll be ready for a nice glass of my Joan’s lemonade. Come on in and rest a minute before you face that lot up at the Hall. It won’t hurt Mrs Peel to wait a mite longer.’ His face creased into a smile and his blue eyes twinkled
from the wrinkles and Hetty felt better immediately. She had been on the way since early morning and here it was two o’clock already and if she could just sit down a minute or two and have a cold drink, well then, she could face the world. She followed him inside, noting the date above the lintel of the door: 1798 it said. Oh, it was an old house and when she got inside it looked even older. There were tiny latticed windows with flowered cretonne curtains and an old brick fireplace with a round oven and bright brass handle.

  The old man spoke to a diminutive elderly woman who was standing at the table kneading dough – teacake dough, Hetty realised. It had nutmeg and spices in it, and the smell, together with that of baking bread, made her mouth water and she had to swallow hard. It was ages since Mam had been able to afford to put spices as well as currants in the teacakes, even when she could afford to make teacakes.

  ‘I don’t know, Bill, where’s thee manners?’ scolded the old woman to her husband and then she turned to Hetty. ‘I’m Joan Oliver, love, and this is my man, Bill Oliver. Bill is gatekeeper for the Fortunes and general handyman too and that means he’s at everyone’s beck and call. Come away and sit down, love, take the weight off your feet. You’re but a slip of a lass – are you sure you’re old enough to leave school?’

  ‘I’m fourteen, Mrs Oliver,’ said Hetty as she sat down on an apple-backed chair with a horsehair cover which immediately began to prickle against her legs, reminding her of her grandma’s chairs at home in Morton. Her spirits lifted slightly. They lifted more when Mrs Oliver put a glass of lemonade in front of her, cool and cloudy and with a slice of real lemon floating on the top.

  ‘Now I’ve got some new bramble jam, first of the year,’ said the old woman. ‘I’m sure you could eat a bit of bread and butter with a spoonful of jam?’

  Hetty nodded, unable to speak.

  ‘There then, get that down you, and then Bill will take you up to the big house.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Oliver.’

  Half an hour later she was trudging behind Bill Oliver up the road and there, round a bend, was Fortune Hall. It was a big house, all right, she thought, and she was going to be housemaid in it. Fervently she hoped she wasn’t going to be the only one. It wasn’t a grand house like the bishop’s palace in Auckland, no, nor yet so big, and there were stables and cow byres and barns to one side of it and never in a million years could she imagine a cow byre on the side of the bishop’s palace. But the house was imposing for all that; solid stone set square against the moorland wind, two storeys with high mullioned windows and tall chimneys with fancy pots.

  ‘Watch your shoes, lass,’ advised Mr Oliver. ‘Keep them out of the muck, I see that stable lad’s fell behind in his work as usual.’ There was horse muck on the cobbles, and hens rooting about in the yard, and in the corner a dog set about barking, warning them away.

  ‘Shut thee mouth, Jess,’ said Mr Oliver, not unkindly, ‘this here’s Hetty and she’s coming to work here so you’d best get used to her.’ The dog wagged its tail and retreated to its kennel where it sat down, watching Hetty with bright intelligent eyes.

  ‘You found your way, then?’ The young rider she had met earlier was crossing the yard from the stables, and smiled amiably at Hetty. With his hat in his hand, he had a red ring around his forehead where it had rested and his hair had been pushed back over his head so that it stuck up untidily. Hetty smiled shyly at him.

  ‘Aye, Master Richard. I brought her in,’ said Mr Oliver. ‘Now seeing as you’re here, you’ll mebbe take her into the house?’

  ‘Right enough.’

  Mr Oliver gave Hetty her straw box, which he had been carrying on his shoulder, and with a word of thanks she followed the boy into the house through the door which led directly into a sort of rear kitchen. Hetty’s heart was beginning to beat uncomfortably. She stared at the stone-flagged floor, only recently scrubbed by the look of it. Master Richard’s boots left a trail of what looked suspiciously like horse muck as he led the way through to a large inner kitchen, a room with a black-leaded range not much different from Hetty’s mother’s in Morton. But there was a newer range beside it, the latest thing with a red-tiled oven door and surround and a cheerful fire burning in the grate. ‘Vaughan’s Model Oven 1931’ it read in raised lettering on the oven door.

  ‘This is the new maid, Mrs Peel,’ said the boy, and winked at Hetty. He picked up a fairy cake from the tray on the scrubbed kitchen table and went off munching it, through a door at the other end of the kitchen.

  ‘Don’t go through there with those boots on, Master Richard!’ the woman in the large white apron and old-fashioned cap called after him, and sighed as the door banged to and he was gone. ‘He’s been told time and time again to come in the small door and leave his boots in the lobby,’ she grumbled. ‘Now there’s more work to be done and it’s Ethel’s afternoon off.’ She turned back to Hetty, who was standing with her box before her like a shield.

  ‘So you’re the new housemaid. Hetty Pearson, isn’t it? There’s not much of you, is there? Such a skinny bit of a thing, you are.’

  ‘I may be skinny but I can work,’ said Hetty, drawing herself up to her full height and lifting her chin. If anyone else said she was skinny she would scream, she thought.

  ‘Hmm, I’m sure. Well, you should call me Mrs Peel, I’m the housekeeper here at the Hall. Come on then, I’ll show you where you’re to sleep. Bring that box you’re guarding with your life and you can leave it upstairs. It’ll be quite safe there.’

  They climbed narrow flights of stairs, six in all, two to each floor so that Hetty was thinking that if they went any higher they’d burst out through the roof. Mrs Peel stopped on a tiny landing and pushed open a brown-painted door.

  ‘That’s it, then,’ she said, puffing. ‘Trust Ethel to have a day off when there’s a new starter to bring up here. Put down your box and hang up your coat. I’ll give you an apron when you get back down and then you can clean up after the young master. Let’s see what sort of a job you make of that.’

  Wondering how she would find her way back to the kitchen, Hetty watched the housekeeper disappear down the staircase. She stood a moment in the silence, or rather listening to the muffled noises of the old house. Somewhere a door banged; a pigeon cooed close by. There was a squeaking sound. Oh God, don’t let it be rats, she prayed. Hetty had had an irrational fear of rats ever since she’d found one climbing into her young sister’s pram and it hadn’t run away when she flung her arms at it and shouted, just turned and stared at her with red-rimmed eyes.

  She shook her head. After all, she was not a bairn any more, she was practically grown up, working for a living, she wasn’t frightened because she was on her own in the attic of an old house. She picked up her box yet again and took it into the room. Mind, an attic it is, she thought despairingly. The roof came right down to within six inches of the floor and the floor itself was of rough wooden planks. Whoever had built the house hadn’t thought it necessary to use good materials up here.

  But there was a tiny window and red-checked curtains, drawn so that some of the afternoon sunshine got in and lit up the two beds with their red-checked counterpanes. There were two tiny chests of drawers and a washstand with a cheap pottery basin and jug standing on it and some soap in a soapdish, all decorated with unlikely pink roses and violent green leaves.

  One of the beds was obviously in use, the bedclothes had just been pulled together rather than made, so Hetty put her box on the other and started to unpack when she remembered that Mrs Peel had said she was just to leave her coat and go straight back down. There was a hook on the back of the door so she hung her coat on that, then she looked in the small mirror over the washstand and pulled her comb through her hair.

  I’m not going to think of anything, she told herself in the mirror, I’m not thinking of Mam or Dad or home nor nothing. I’m just going to get on with it, do what I’m told, think about nothing, else I won’t get through the rest of the day without making a baby of meself. I won’
t cry though, no matter what. But her feet hurt. Hurrying, she rummaged through the box and found her old school shoes. They had steel segs in the toes and heels to make them last and clattered a bit on the floor but they were well polished and, most important of all, they were comfortable. The relief she felt when she put them on was instantaneous and her spirits lifted. She even managed to grin at herself in the mirror and she snatched another minute to look out of the tiny window at the moor and the track she had so recently travelled, snaking away into the distance.

  Why, it wasn’t that different from the fell back home, she thought. Though from this distance the heather wasn’t half so bonny as that back in the Durham dale. Feeling better having come to this conclusion, she closed the attic door after herself and made her way downstairs.

  Only she must have taken the wrong turning on the first landing she came to and suddenly the floor was stained and polished so that it shone and a lush red carpet ran down the middle. And when she got to the head of the next flight of stairs, the banisters were polished mahogany and the stairs themselves were broad and shallow and swept down grandly to the next floor.

  Hetty hesitated. Maybe she should go back, but now she wasn’t sure which way she had come and felt thoroughly disoriented. And worse, there were people talking close by. She shrank back into an alcove but it was too late, there was a man looking down at her with exactly the same expression on his face as her gran wore to inspect her shoe when she’d trodden in some dog dirt.

  ‘Good Lord!’ he said. ‘Just look at this, Richard.’ He put a hand on Hetty’s shoulder and pulled her forward into the light. ‘It’s a bundle of rags. I’ll lay you odds on she’s here to see what she can pilfer from the bedrooms and we’ve caught her in the act!’ Roughly he grabbed her wrist. ‘Don’t think you can get away, girl, I’m going to hand you over to the police!’

  A bundle of rags? Why, she had on her good dress, it wasn’t a rag at all. Oh, it might have a darn in the elbow where she’d torn it on a fence but it was a nice cotton dress, with blue flowers on it. Mam had got the material in the market at Bishop Auckland. Hetty burned with humiliation. She tried to tug her arm away from him but his grip was firm.