A Night in Cold Harbour by Margaret Kennedy

Author:Margaret Kennedy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473513075
Publisher: Random House

5

NOTHING WOULD CONVINCE Tibbie that she had not been turned out to die by the stony-hearted New-bolts. Nor would she allow that a room over the stables could be described as ‘her own little cottage’. As for Mrs. Hollins as an attendant, that dirty tramp and her children should never come next or nigh her. She would sooner die in a ditch.

‘But she will do far more for you,’ pleaded Jenny, ‘than the maids do here. You always complain that they neglect you.’

‘So they do. Sluts all.’

‘Mrs. Hollins will be in the stables too, next door to you. Whenever you ring this pretty little bell …’

‘I’ll ring no bell. She’ll rob me right and left. Your Papa is out of his senses to bring her here, and that’s what all the village says.’

‘She has nowhere else to go. Cranton turned them off.

‘And for why? Folks don’t get turned off for nothing.’

‘You should be sorry for her. You never had so hard a life yourself.’

‘I’d have been ashamed, at her age, if I couldn’t keep myself. I got my own bread from the time I was seven years old till the Lord struck me down paralytical. And there she is, eating your Papa out of house and home, likewise her brats, what can’t keep themselves either.’

‘They’ll be put to work. Sukey is to weed the garden.’

‘She don’t know weeds from seeds. A fine thing it will be when all folks as don’t relish hard work can look for free lodging with the gentry.’

Jenny shook her head sadly. She had never expected this scheme to answer. The Hollins family might be lodged above the stables, to the scandal of the entire village, but Tibbie would never be persuaded to join them. Compulsion would be cruel, and she had even ventured to tell her father that kindness to Mrs. Hollins did not justify cruelty to Tibbie. He refused to give up a plan which had struck him as solving two problems at one stroke. It provided employment for Mrs. Hollins, and might ensure better care of Tibbie. There seemed to be no other work available for the widow. The servants, already irritated by the introduction of Dickie Cottar, insisted that she would never be fit to work in a gentleman’s house. The farmers wanted no strangers in their fields. Dr. Newbolt had at first placed hopes upon a mangle. He had heard that a widow with a mangle might always keep herself. But it appeared that no mangling was required in Stretton Courtenay.

For the children Satan had found plenty of employment. Having nothing to do, for the first time in their lives, they could not keep out of mischief. They broke the cucumber frames, let the pigs into the gardens, overate themselves and were noisily sick in church. Sukey had publicly used a term for an apron so obscene that village matrons were obliged to whisper it behind their hands: ‘She called it a — cover!’ Even Dr. Newbolt had left off patting their heads, which Jenny, after a shocked examination, had been obliged to shave.

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