Page 14 of The Last House in Lambton (Pride and Prejudice Variations #6)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
J anuary slowly turned into February. The weather was nearly as wet, with fewer days of rain but more days of snow. I had settled in, and the hours I spent keeping house for Mrs Jennings plodded along—in mimicry of Doreen—as an unvarying parade of things to do.
Much as I did not wish to agree with him, Mr Darcy had been right.
Winter was hard to endure. Perhaps, like nature herself, we were all running out of whatever enthusiasm and vigour we had stored up during the previous spring, much as our larder was running out of fresh and interesting fare.
Mrs Smith was a mundane cook, well suited to preparing the uninteresting dishes of winter, which meant we ate our fair share of salted fish, meat pies, and stews.
I began to wish for something to eat that was not brown, imagining too often the greens of asparagus and new peas in May, the red strawberries in June, and the golden melons that ripened in July.
Not only did I yearn for fresh food, I also wished for air—for the warm breezes of late summer or even the brisk wind of autumn.
Lambton sat under a pall of smoke, our chimneys sending ash-tinted plumes upward in columnar fashion, only to merge into a single leaden cloud over our heads.
In Mrs Jennings’s house, we burnt coal in braziers in our rooms and wood in the hearths.
The constant tramping into the house with wood and coal and out of the house with buckets of ash, meant even more sweeping and dusting.
The yard was at times a sea of mud, and our woollen dresses were darker than the muslins of summer, adding to my impression the world had turned the drab colour that was neither brown nor grey.
In the village, there was some talk of a mine closure north of Lambton.
At Stevenson’s, I heard that winter was a harsh time to close down, and when I went to the apothecary for a little oil of peppermint to soothe Mrs Jennings’s light cough, I heard we could expect desperate stragglers on the road, coming south in search of work.
Doreen and Penny seemed on edge, and as the days passed, I began to be slightly uneasy about Penny sleeping alone in the kitchen.
After a conference with Doreen, we shifted things around in the attic, and I put the two girls together.
I thought of asking Smith to stay at night. It seemed prudent to do so, and I would have, if he had not been racked with a cough. But after several days, talk about the vagrants died down, and my worries subsided.
Thus, after making sure Auntie was fully asleep, when I went down to the kitchen to assure myself the fire was well banked, I was entertaining other worries.
Principally, I wondered what my life back home would be like when I returned.
I could not quite envision myself comfortable doing nothing at all, so accustomed had I become to work.
Perhaps I would be happy being Charlotte Collins’s drudge, after all—a silly idea that made me smile as I absently opened the back door in response to a low thud.
Had Mrs Edmonton’s man returned the barrow he had taken earlier in the day ?
“Give us a bite now, missy, will ya?” growled a man who stood in the dark by the pump.
“What? No! Go away,” I said, moving to close the door.
Too late I discovered another man in the shadow behind the door. He pushed past me, and in a flash, four men swarmed into the warmth and sanctity of Mrs Jennings’s house. I stood in speechless amazement, too shocked yet to feel fear.
“What are you doing?” I suddenly demanded, finding the outrage to stand my ground.
“Enjoyin’ yer hospitality. Wat’s fer supper, eh? Give us a plate, then.”
There was no time to think. I began to operate strictly on impulse, on intuition, and with a strong sense that I had better not antagonise my visitors.
“I will do no such thing,” I replied saucily.
“Eh?” asked one of them. So far, he had done most of the talking, and so to him I continued to speak.
“If you wish to eat in this kitchen, you will at least scrape the mud off your boots and wash your hands,” I turned towards the stove to build up the fire. “There is soap on that dish there, and use that apron to dry.”
I do not know how I spoke so offhandedly, but I began to act as though this sort of invasion of the kitchen were an ordinary occurrence.
I opened the cupboard and pulled out the remains of raised pie from dinner, put it in a large iron skillet, and began to warm it up.
There, on the sideboard under a crockery cloche, was the cheese, which I pulled out and sliced.
As I worked, I was aware that my visitors stood stock-still, staring at my back.
“Well?” I asked briskly, not bothering to turn around. “Will you wash and sit at that table or take your supper on the steps?”
First one, and then the next began to wash, eyeing me warily.
In under half a minute, however, they were back to their original swagger, speaking with strong northern accents, laughing, and taking seats on the benches at the table.
I calmly put down bread, cheese, and butter, taking stock of them as I did so.
None of them looked like miners to me. They seemed even too rough for that. Were they what the cook referred to as rovers—men who raided farms and bullied market stall sellers, men who stole their living rather than work for it?
“Much obliged, me darlin’,” one of the men called out to me. “Be a dear and sit on me knee while I eat, eh?” He had a menacing grin and wore a grimy muffler around his neck.
“She ain’t sittin wif yew,” growled the man who first forced his way into the kitchen. He then leered at me, and said, “She likes a fella wif teef.”
“I like a man with manners,” I firmly replied, setting down plates and turning to serve the raised pie.
My impertinence earned me a few howls of appreciation.
I felt the danger, but rather than being afraid, I had slipped into a heightened state.
Every detail became vividly alive, my mind sharply focused, my senses fully alert.
Food—it was all I could think to do. I would buy myself time by putting more food in front of them. Tins of biscuits, jars of pickles, cups of hot milk, a small piece of cake covered in a napkin at the back of the shelf that Penny must have hidden away for herself.
“You there,” I said to the ruffian who leered at me most explicitly and seemed somewhat in charge, “what is your name?”
“That there be Crupps,” said the one without ‘teef’.
“I see,” I said, flashing a bright smile. “Crupps, bear a hand with that cellar door if you would like to try a bit of salt beef in cream.” I had seen Mrs Smith reconstitute beef in this way as a quick dinner for the servants. “I believe there is a small bit of ham left, too. ”
Unbelievably, the man responded to my tone of fearless authority.
He lifted the heavy door, and I went down the ladder, thinking vaguely I would likely be thrown down there once they had finished using me.
The conclusion of this surreal circumstance stood in my mind as inevitable.
They were too pointed in their looks, too ready to laugh at the vulgar suggestions that came more frequently with every minute that passed.
Once their stomachs were full, they would begin to wonder who else was in the house and why I was alone.
Their other appetites would soon awaken, particularly when they realised that only a very old lady and two young girls stood in their way. They would begin to pillage in earnest.
I was still too numb to be frightened.
I made the salted beef in cream, and put the remains of the hambone and a knife on the table for them to carve.
There would be no point in trying to keep a knife from men who would only wrest it away from my grip and take brutal satisfaction in using it against me.
I kept busy to keep terror at bay, but it was slowly building beneath the calmness of my exterior.
It threatened to break through when Crupps spoke again, this time with a touch of menace beneath his leering admiration.
“Now, don’t ya be stingy, chit. This ‘ere porter can’t fill a thimble for so many a’ us. Bring us the bottles ye ain’t wantin’ to share.”
If they were now thinking of strong drink, they would soon be searching Mrs Jennings’s parlour cabinets.
“There is a little wine in the other room. I will bring it to you, but meanwhile, there is ale in the cellar you can fetch up for yourselves.” I had purposely withheld that information to buy time, and my time was now up. I dashed out of the room.