Someone Special (7 page)

In the small room, comfortable and familiar to them
both, mother and child went through the nightly ritual together. Hester fed Helen, washed her, changed her into her nightgown and then laid her on the mat to kick and coo whilst she considered what she should wear to visit this Mrs Cledwen. She was going cleaning, so her oldest clothes seemed called for, but since she was also going to meet a strange woman, and she was visiting the home of her husband’s employer, surely that meant that she should wear a decent dress and her most respectable shoes?

In the end, she compromised. She washed thoroughly, brushed her hair hard and put on a clean blue cotton dress. Since her footwear consisted of the shoes she had got married in, some wellington boots and a pair of ancient sandals her choice in this line was limited, and it shrank further when she thought of the length of the neglected gravel drive which led from the lodge to the castle. Trudging up there in her best shoes would be hell, and it wouldn’t do the shoes much good either. She would sweat like a pig in her wellingtons, so the sandals it would be.

Having made up her mind about her clothing she then tried her hair loose, tied back, and pinned to the crown of her head with a couple of tortoiseshell combs which had once belonged to old Mrs Coburn. She looked really elegant in the tortoiseshell combs, but practicality told her that she wouldn’t look elegant long, not scrubbing floors she wouldn’t. So she tied her hair back with a clean piece of string, checked her appearance again, and went through to the kitchen with Helen tucked under her arm.

It was clean, cleared, tidy; of Matthew there was no sign. She found him in the front room, reading a newspaper, sitting beside the empty cradle. He looked up and smiled as she laid the already sleepy child among its blankets.

‘You look very smart,’ he said approvingly. ‘Are you off then?’

‘Yes,’ Hester said shortly. ‘Shan’t be long.’

‘It’s all right, I can manage.’

‘Not when she begins to squall for her ten o’clock feed you can’t,’ Hester reminded him. ‘But I’ll be back long before then.’

Matthew, realising that she was still cross, grunted and returned to his paper, so Hester went back and patted his shoulder, then bolted out of the front door before he could grab her hand and start any silly nonsense. That was the trouble, she thought half-guiltily, she had quite enough to do with the house and Helen, without starting any of
that
up again, so she couldn’t let him think … Of course the present arrangement was only temporary, but … Her thoughts broke down in confusion and she turned them determinedly away from her marriage and Matthew and fixed her eyes on the castle.

In the golden evening light, for the sun was sinking over a cobalt sea behind her, it looked more romantic than ever. The trees were in full leaf now, the creeper which decorated the walls was luxuriant, the ornamental trees, planted long ago by a richer owner than the present one, were in flower. As she got nearer, Hester guessed, the flaws would begin to show but from here it was a fairytale castle, beautiful, impregnable.

The drive was a long one, though unimpressive. Because of the lie of the land – and the wind from the sea, Hester guessed – there were no trees until you got into the shelter of the cliff, so the drive passed across flat pastureland, grazed by sheep and a few cattle, with scarcely a bush to vary the monotony. If you had driven up it, in a carriage and four or a common-or-garden motor car, you might not have found it a particularly trying ride, but to Hester, slogging along on foot, it seemed a boring journey. It would be easier to go into
the village, Hester thought crossly, willing the castle to get closer more quickly. It would be nearer to walk into the little town. Why shouldn’t I get a job somewhere else? Why shouldn’t I catch a bus into Rhyl each day and have some fun? Imagine walking all this way in the rain or the snow! And at the end of the walk an icy old ruin, whereas if I went into Rhyl I could work in a nice warm hotel, or a shop, or even at the pier theatre, or a dance-hall. I’ll have to talk to Matthew about it. After all, it’s me that’s doing the work, not him – or the old man!

But no walk lasts for ever and at length Hester found herself going in under a perfectly enormous arch and entering the courtyard. At such close quarters, she could see that the castle was as dilapidated as Matthew had led her to suppose. Above her head, the creeper which looked so romantic from afar was entering the slit windows, straggling across some, twining its way into others which had no glass in them. Birds had nested in the eaves, judging by the mess on the great paving slabs nearest the building, and from the range of stabling to her right a gaggle of geese suddenly erupted, hissing and flapping at the stranger in their midst, big orange beaks gaping, tiny eyes sparkling with cold fury.

‘Get away,’ Hester said feebly. It had never occurred to her that geese could be threatening, but these creatures were positively terrifying to a city girl. ‘Go away, go on!’

The geese ignored her strictures, so Hester traversed the courtyard a good deal faster than she intended, fairly flying across the paving stones and up the steps to the front door. The geese looked as though they might mount the steps in pursuit so she rattled desperately on the door, shyness and diffidence forgotten in her fear of the enemy.

No one answered her frantic knock so she grabbed the iron ring and twisted it and was relieved when the door creaked open, showing a dark and gloomy space behind. Hester glanced back. The largest of the geese
was stretching its neck at her, horrible thing, so she shot inside and pushed the heavy door to behind her.

She was still leaning against the door, panting, when another door opened and someone came out of a room to her left. It was a man, she could tell by the shape of the silhouette, but other than that she could not have said whether he was fair or dark, young or old. He must have heard the slam of the front door, though, because he glanced in her direction, then addressed her.

‘You! What d’you want?’

‘I–I want to s-see Mrs Cledwen,’ Hester quavered, all her natural self-confidence having disappeared with the arrival of the geese. ‘M-my husband sent me.’

The man made a disbelieving, grumbling sort of noise.

‘Why d’you come to the front door? What’s wrong with the kitchen entrance?’

‘The g-geese,’ poor Hester said in a small voice. ‘They chased me, and I don’t know where the kitchen entrance is.’

‘You go round the back, ignore the arch … oh, hold on.’

He sounded horribly cross still, but at least, Hester realised, he was not about to eject her into the goose-ridden courtyard once more. He crossed the hallway, still just a tall dark figure to her, and opened a door. He shouted something through it, then returned.

‘Wait,’ he said curtly, and disappeared, shutting the door firmly behind him.

Having little alternative, Hester waited, and presently, from the doorway through which he had shouted, another figure emerged. A woman’s silhouette this time, a woman in a black dress, with a pale face framed in masses of dark hair. She peered across at Hester through the gloom.

‘Mrs Coburn? Is that you? Didn’t Matthew tell you to come to the back door?’

‘He just said to come up and see you,’ Hester said. ‘The geese chased me. I’m very sorry …’

The woman laughed. ‘Those bloody birds! All right, follow me.’

She had sworn! She had the voice of a lady but the vocabulary of a docker, Hester thought, thoroughly confused. And no matter how dark it was, she was sure that Mrs Cledwen was neither old nor ugly; there was youth in that tall figure, that mass of dark hair, and judging from the way she moved and spoke she had plenty of that unthinking self-confidence which rarely accompanies ugliness.

Hester followed the other woman down a long, dark corridor, through another doorway and into a large, warm room which proved to be the kitchen. It was not dissimilar to Hester’s own kitchen, though it was roughly four times the size. There was an old-fashioned kitchen range, two enormous, scrubbed wooden tables, two sinks, both at knee-level, and an open fire, with bake-ovens set into the wall on either side. In every available space there were floor-to-ceiling glass-fronted cupboards, and two long, low windows looked out on to a stableyard. Hester stared all round the room, then at last let her gaze rest on her companion, who was surveying her thoughtfully.

Mrs Cledwen was not just beautiful, she was striking. She was tall and slender, with a rich mass of coal-black hair, very white skin and blue eyes, and she had scarlet lips which parted as she smiled at Hester to reveal perfect, pearly little teeth. Hester, dazzled, thought she had never seen a woman so beautiful.

‘So you are Matthew’s little bride! No wonder he’s kept you hidden away – you’re very pretty. Now I wonder just what you saw in our worthy Matthew?’

Hester, who had sometimes wondered the same thing, found she was bristling at the implied criticism, but before she could speak Mrs Cledwen shook her head at herself,
with a grimace so comical that Hester could not help but smile.

‘Listen to me! What a perfectly beastly thing to say, especially as Matthew is not only worthy, he’s one of the handsomest men I know. But he is shy with women, even with me, and he’s known me for a number of years, so I can’t help wondering how he brought himself to propose marriage.’

‘He is shy,’ Hester allowed, ‘but once we got to know each other we got on very well and perhaps my being not very old made it easier for him.’

‘Were you still at school last summer? You do seem very young, my dear.’

‘I’d left school,’ Hester said quickly. ‘The summer in Rhyl was a – a holiday before I started work.’

‘I see. And how long have you been married now?’

‘Not terribly long,’ Hester said stiffly, telling herself that it was a nasty, nosy sort of question for anyone to ask. Despite Mrs Cledwen’s prettiness and charm she was beginning to dislike the other woman’s inquisition – if she had been here, as she said, for years, she must know very well when Matthew brought his bride back to the lodge. ‘Can you tell what you want me to do?’

‘To do? Oh, the housework.’ Mrs Cledwen plunged a hand into the pocket of her full black skirt and produced a small watch on a length of gold chain. She consulted its face. ‘Just cleaning, my dear, and I should prefer that you start earlier, tomorrow. At about ten in the morning, I think. You may bring the child. You have a perambulator?’

‘It’s very old; but I daresay it’ll survive being pushed up the drive,’ Hester said. ‘Suppose the baby cries, though?’

‘You know best how to hush her,’ Mrs Cledwen said briskly. ‘Tomorrow morning, at ten, you may start in here. You can clean right through, and I’ll keep an eye on you so that no mistakes get made. If you work hard you’ll be
free by lunchtime. I’ll pay you weekly; you should earn about two shillings and sixpence a week, which isn’t bad for a dozen or so hours.’

Hester thought of the girls she had met who were waitressing in Rhyl; they got five shillings a week, but then they worked a ten-or twelve-hour day, and there were tips too. Probably half a crown was fair, especially since she would have to take time off to see to Helen.

‘All right, I’ll be here by ten,’ she said equably. ‘What else will I be required to do, apart from cleaning in here?’

‘You’ll do the rough work,’ Mrs Cledwen told her. ‘Scrubbing, carting coal, laying and lighting the fires in the winter.’

‘Ten o’clock’s too late for fires,’ Hester pointed out. ‘It takes an hour for a room to warm up. Fires are usually lit before breakfast.’

Mrs Cledwen gave her a glance in which annoyance and a grudging respect were mingled. ‘Yes, of course, I was forgetting. Very well then, you had best come earlier, in winter.’

Hester shook her head. ‘I can’t, Mrs Cledwen. Don’t you have a housemaid to do things like that? I have to do my own work before I come, I have to see to the baby and Matthew. Ten o’clock is the earliest I can manage.’

Mrs Cledwen chewed her lip, a faint frown marring her perfect brow.

‘I see. Well, the fire in the range stays in all the time, but I shall have to light the other fires myself, until we get a housemaid. Your job will be to keep the scuttles and wood-boxes full, the floors clean and the paintwork and furniture polished. You must be flexible, so that if I tell you to do something different you can learn to do it, whatever it may be. And you’ll start at ten o’clock tomorrow morning; is that all right?’

‘Yes m’m,’ Hester said, hoping that she now sounded sufficiently like a scrubbing woman. She guessed that Mrs
Cledwen would keep an eye on her to start with, but after that she would be able to explore. After all, she had yearned to know what the castle was like; what better way to find out than to work here? It would not be fun, of course, in the way working in Rhyl would have been fun, but it was convenient in other ways. And she had always known in her heart that Helen would make it impossible for her to apply for the more interesting jobs. ‘What’ll I do now, Mrs Cledwen?’

‘Now? Oh well, since you’re here you’d best come with me into the scullery. I’ll show you where the cleaning things are kept.’

Leaving the castle, by the back way this time, Hester reviewed her visit. Mrs Cledwen was a strange person, friendly one minute, nosy the next, frosty the next. She’s very beautiful but I don’t think she’s very nice, Hester decided. She’s the sort to take advantage – I bet I slave for that half a crown!

Despite her attempts to find out, she still didn’t know precisely what job Mrs Cledwen held at the castle. Housekeeper? But a self-respecting housekeeper wouldn’t light the fires, she would insist that the old man got a housemaid, probably two or three. A poor relative, perhaps? But poor relations who were as young and beautiful as Mrs Cledwen didn’t stay poor relations long. If I hadn’t known I might have thought her the old man’s daughter; could she be a niece, perhaps, or some other relative? Not a poor relation but a rich or eccentric one, someone who chose to live at the castle because she wanted to do so, not because she had nowhere else to go.

However, asking herself unanswerable questions did not help much and since she was to start work in the morning she would have countless opportunities to satisfy her curiosity. The extra money would be nice, of course, but the more Hester thought about it the more sure she
became that working at the castle might yet prove a doubtful pleasure. The cleaning things, kept in a tall cupboard in the smelly, chilly little scullery, consisted of a bass broom, some torn-up shirts, a couple of buckets and a very large, very new scrubbing brush. Mrs Cledwen bought the brush when the old man told her I was going to work for her, Hester thought, aggrieved, but Mrs Cledwen didn’t know enough about scrubbing floors to buy soap as well. She had pointed out the lack and received a chilly glance from those magnificent blue eyes, but Mrs Cledwen had seen her point.