The Tale of Applebeck Orchard (17 page)

Perhaps Gilly is not afraid because she knows, she can feel, that the Gray Lady means her no harm. Or perhaps she is not afraid because she is a self-contained young person who watches and observes and keeps her feelings hidden deep within herself. She finds herself angry much of the time—can you blame her?—but she is not one who is easily frightened, even by a ghost she can see through, like a will-o’-the-wisp. (Some grownups may scoff at the idea of ghosts and fairies and dragons and suchlike, but I confess that I am not one of them, especially when it comes to the Land Between the Lakes, which is an undeniably magical place. Here, almost anything can happen, and generally does. Ghosts that you can see through are not out of the question.)

And whether Gilly knows that the Gray Lady once lived in her attic room makes no difference at all, for what Gilly knows or doesn’t know about the Applebeck past has nothing to do with her present life there. Her mother died when she was four. She lived with her father and younger brother in Liverpool. When her father died, her brother went to live with their mother’s sister on a small farm in the Midlands, and Gilly was sent to live with her father’s brother and his wife at Applebeck Farm.

Mr. Harmsworth would have preferred to have taken her brother, of course—boys are always at a premium on farms—but he was only eleven and sickly. Upon inspection, Gilly proved to be both strong and tall, and Mr. Harmsworth decided that she could probably do the work as well as an ailing boy, who (he said) might take it into his head to die at any moment. He was right. The boy died of consumption not long after he went to live with his aunt, whereupon Mr. Harmsworth congratulated himself (in Gilly’s hearing) upon his astute judgment. I am sure you can understand Gilly’s bitterness when she heard this callous remark, for she loved her brother very much.

The work, of course, was Mr. Harmsworth’s chief consideration in all of this, since neither he nor Mrs. Harmsworth was inclined to give a home to a homeless child out of the goodness of their hearts. No, indeed. The girl should have to work for her living, like the rest of the world. The Harmsworths did not even mean her to finish school, but changed their minds when Miss Nash called at the house and made it clear that the school officials expected all children in the district to complete their educations. When the term was done, that was the end of that.

So, like most girls and boys in England at this time (and in America, too, for that matter), Gilly went to work. And very hard work it was—or at least, we would think so. In fact, we might find this kind of life very hard to imagine, since our own boys and girls are asked, at the most, to clean their rooms and keep their toys picked up. Gilly got up before dawn and milked the three Applebeck cows while it was still dark outside, then did the breakfast washing-up, made beds, swept the floors, and dusted. After that came the work of the day, overseen by Mrs. Harmsworth: washing on Monday, ironing on Tuesday, mending on Wednesday, marketing on Thursday, cleaning on Friday, and baking on Saturday. The Harmsworths were chapel and observed a strict Sabbath on Sunday, which meant that there was no reading (unless it was the Bible) nor amusements of any kind. But while meals were eaten cold, the milking and washing-up still had to be done.

In addition to her household duties, Gilly was also expected to work in Applebeck’s separate buttery, a stone building with a wooden roof, where much of the household’s work—baking, washing, pickling, churning, and cheesemaking—went on. This was also where the great oak casks were kept, holding oatmeal and barley. There was a stack of wooden buckets and a cheese press, too, and cheese-rims and shelves full of cheeses, and a large wooden up-and-down butter churn (old-fashioned by this time and replaced in most households by the box churn and oval churn, but still in use at Applebeck). It was Gilly’s job to milk the cows, separate the milk from the cream by pouring it into flat pans and skimming off the cream that rose to the top, then churn the cream into butter, and make the cheeses.

In her spare hours (they must have been few!), she was sent to work in the garden—by itself, a demanding job, since all the potatoes, cabbages, beans, and greens that appeared on the table were grown on the farm. Mrs. Harmsworth prepared breakfast, dinner, and tea (like many farm families, the Harmsworths ate their main meal at noon and had a hearty tea, something like what we would call an early supper), but Gilly did the washing-up. Every evening was spent beside the fire, mending, darning, and knitting socks. Bedtime was early, for they were all very tired. (I don’t wonder at this, do you?) And since Gilly was not allowed to take a candle to the attic—candles were expensive, and there was always the danger of fire—she could not read her book, except (as I said) on nights when there was a very bright moon.

In our time, children asked to do even a fraction of this work would certainly rebel and go about pouting all the time or threaten outright to run away from home. But it was not the work that made Gilly want to leave Applebeck. No, not at all. Children who lived on farms worked on the farms, and children who lived in factory towns worked in the factories, and both girls and boys grew up expecting to live a life built around work. What’s more, Gilly had a special affection for the Applebeck cows, and enjoyed making butter and cheese from their milk, a magical process, or so it seemed. Dairy work, she thought, was a very pleasurable occupation. If she could choose, she would gladly spend all her time at it. No, it was not the work that troubled her, but the people she worked for, of whom I will have more to say a page or two further on.

As I write this, I find myself feeling very sorry that our story must include Gilly’s unhappy circumstances at Applebeck Farm. I would find it far more pleasant to write (and you to read, I am sure) about cheerful Deirdre Malone at Courier Cottage, who has just been promoted to help Mr. Sutton manage the accounts in his veterinary practice. Or about Caroline Longford, Lady Longford’s granddaughter, who has almost no work to do at Tidmarsh Manor, and should (one might think) be the most cheerful of these three young women. But Caroline is not, as we shall see shortly, for she has immodest ambitions and her life seems strewn with insurmountable challenges. In sum, I believe that Margaret Nash—who is herself not the happiest of women—can be forgiven for her suspicion that most women of her time, no matter their social class, were destined to be unhappy.

Mrs. Ernestina Harmsworth of Applebeck Farm was certainly amongst the unhappy ones. Born Ernestina Westgate, daughter of a penniless country parson, she had met and married Mr. Harmsworth (on very short acquaintance) just two years before, in the city of Manchester where she was working and Mr. Harmsworth had taken his apples to sell. She was already a spinster when Mr. Harmsworth came into her life, for reasons having mostly to do with her own lack of physical attractions (she was gaunt and bony, with a great beak of a nose and thinning hair eked out with hair-pieces fore and aft) and a certain selectivity where men were concerned.

It is perhaps ironic that, after exercising such particular care in the choice of a husband, Miss Westgate should so passionately fasten her affections on Mr. Harmsworth, who was neither wealthy nor handsome nor learned nor a gifted conversationalist. But he may have presented himself somewhat differently to her than he has to us. And when we are in love (or think we are), we often see the object of our desire through rose-colored glasses.

I am not at all sure that it was love, however, that led Miss Westgate to agree to become Mrs. Harmsworth. Perhaps I am being overly mistrustful of the lady’s motives, but I rather suspect that the greater attraction was the prospect of leaving the haberdashery where she was employed as a shopgirl and moving to her very own home, where she would be in full charge of her very own household, which at the time of the proposal included a young maid-of-all-work named Prunie and a dairymaid named Fancy. (Miss Westgate had never enjoyed working in that haberdashery, and in any event would have had to find a new place, because the shop burned, together with the whole block of adjacent shops, the day she gave notice. Miss Westgate had watched the enormous conflagration from a distance, and had felt quite satisfied at the sight.) A great many marriages have been made for reasons other than love, however: marriage for financial gain, for social status, for security, for comfort. If Miss Westgate had other motives, they were her business entirely, and I for one will not criticize. I am sure that you would not want anyone second-guessing your decision to marry.

But whatever Miss Westgate’s motives, they may not have served Mrs. Harmsworth well. When she agreed to marry Mr. Harmsworth, you see, she had the idea that she was coming to a better situation—taking a step up, as she put it to herself. This is not to say that Mr. Harmsworth intentionally deceived her, but rather that she deceived herself, hearing only what she wanted to hear about the farm he owned and the tiny village where it was situated. As a result, Miss Westgate had developed a rather romantic notion of the place, imagining it to be much grander, more substantial, and more inviting than Mrs. Harmsworth found it to be.

By the time of our story, I am sorry to report, her heart was filled with a bitter disappointment, for she had come to recognize Applebeck for what it was: a bleak, neglected, and unhappy Lakeland house attached to a poor garden, an old orchard (from which Mr. Harmsworth made just enough money to live on), and pasture enough for only three thin cows. In fact, when she first arrived, the new Mrs. Harmsworth was sorely tempted to pack up her things and return to Manchester forthwith—although that (for reasons known only to herself) did not seem like a very good idea. She had been further deterred by the fact that she had not a penny of her own, not even enough to buy a train ticket. And of course, there had been nothing to return to. The haberdashery was gone, the room she had lived in was let, and she would have to look for a new place and somewhere to live—all on no money.

This was indeed a dark moment, but things were about to get darker. Mr. Harmsworth had not chosen his new wife for her beauty or her dowry, or because he had fallen desperately in love with her. His motives were much simpler than that, and he made no effort to disguise them. He had watched Miss Westgate at her work and felt that she was a strong and capable woman. And because she expressed such a firm interest in his apple business, he had got the notion that she would willingly join him in his efforts to make a success of Applebeck. I think you can see that there was more than a little self-deception on both sides.

At any rate, when the newly married Mrs. Harmsworth arrived at Applebeck, she discovered that her husband had discharged both the maid-of-all-work and the dairymaid and had used their wages to buy a cider press. You can imagine the effect of this decision on Mrs. Harmsworth, who was not consulted. Any illusions about her new husband were quickly dispelled, and Mrs. Harmsworth realized that Mr. Harmsworth was every bit as bleak and unhappy as his house.

Mrs. Harmsworth was not of a cheerful nature to start with, and these experiences only embittered her further. It was not long, then, before she began taking matters into her own hands. She blamed her husband for her present circumstances and took pleasure in finding little ways to get even with him, such as pouring out a quart of good milk or loosening the bung on an apple cider keg or smashing a nest of eggs. She wrung every penny she could from the inadequate household allowance that her husband gave her (which no doubt accounts for the perennial shortage of candles, matches, sugar, and tea at Applebeck Farm). She even pilfered his pocketbook from time to time, especially after he’d just got back from the pub and was in no condition to recall how much he had spent. She tied this hoard of money into a blue kerchief and hid it under a floorboard in her bedroom upstairs, thinking ahead to the day when she would have enough to go somewhere—to Liverpool, perhaps, since it wasn’t a good idea to go back to Manchester—and set herself up in business as a seamstress. It wasn’t that she was particularly skilled in needlework, or that she had any very practical plan for her future. It was just that she needed to imagine herself doing something, anything, other than living at Applebeck.

Things became a little more comfortable for Mrs. Harmsworth when Gilly arrived and was given many of the housekeeping tasks. She kept a sharp eye on the girl and a sharp tongue, too, with a shrill, “Gilly, do this,” and “Gilly, do that,” and “Hurry up, Gilly!” every few moments. And on the occasions when Gilly did not move smartly enough or did not follow her orders exactly, Mrs. Harmsworth would give her a lash or two with a small riding crop she kept for this purpose. Perhaps the mistress thought she was doing her duty by minding the servant. But I think it more likely that she was merely taking out her frustrations on someone who was lower in the Applebeck pecking order than herself.

Unfortunately, having Gilly to order about did nothing to ease Mrs. Harmsworth’s resentments against her husband. In fact, her anger had become volcanic, constantly steaming away under the surface, sometimes erupting violently, lava-like. She had stopped speaking to her husband, glowered at him across the table, banged the dishes and plates whenever he was in the room, and flew into frequent fierce rages. And since Mr. Harmsworth paid no attention at all to his wife, it was easy for Mrs. Harmsworth to turn her wrath on Gilly, who had learnt to duck when the crockery came whizzing through the air.

Mr. Harmsworth, for his part, did not notice whether Mrs. Harmsworth loved him or hated him. If he was disappointed in his wife’s refusal to join in his efforts to make the apple business pay, he didn’t reveal it. He was the same stolid, unmoving creature from one day to the next, keeping his eyes on his work, speaking only to give an order or complain that something was not done right. In all the months Gilly had lived there, she had seen him aroused to excitement only once. That was the night the haystack burnt, when he had rushed out across the field with a bucket to put it out, which was of course very silly, for by that time the fire was roaring away, and nothing but the heaviest downpour of rain could have doused it, and perhaps not even that.