Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [22]
Taking a deep breath, she marched up to the front door and rang the bell. It clanged loudly, echoing through the house, and suddenly she felt dry-mouthed and nervous.
The door was opened by an elderly woman in a grey dress with a white apron and frilly cap.
‘I came in answer to the advertisement for someone to help with sewing and laundry,’ Beth said, a little too loudly. ‘My name is Miss Bolton.’
The woman looked her up and down. ‘Where are you from?’ she asked.
‘Church Street,’ Beth said.
‘You’d better come in,’ the woman said, and frowned as if puzzled. ‘The mistress is out at the moment, but I’ll take your particulars and tell her when she returns.’
The woman led her to the back of the house to a small, simply furnished room. Beth got the idea it was her room, for she’d caught a glimpse of the drawing room as she walked down the hall and that was very grand, with fancy carpets and lovely couches and armchairs.
‘Sit down, please,’ the woman said. ‘I’m Mrs Bruce, Mrs Langworthy’s housekeeper. How old are you?’
‘Sixteen, mam,’ Beth said.
‘And do you have a character?’
Beth had no idea what she meant by that.
‘A letter from your last employer?’ Mrs Bruce said rather tersely.
‘I had to leave the hosiery shop where I worked in a hurry,’ Beth said, and breathlessly explained that her recently widowed mother had died in childbirth. ‘I couldn’t go back to my position at the shop as I had to stay home and take care of my little sister.’
∗
Beth was peeling potatoes for the evening meal, with Molly, propped up against some cushions in a wooden box beside the sink, gnawing on a crust of bread, when Mr Filbert, the man who ran the shoe shop downstairs, called up to her. ‘Miss Bolton, a young lad has just brought a letter for you!’ ‘I’ll be right down,’ she called back, rinsing her hands and drying them on her apron. She felt certain the letter could only be to turn her down, but at least Mrs Langworthy or her housekeeper had been polite enough to write.
‘Not bad news, I hope?’ Mr Filbert asked as Beth stood in the doorway through to his shop gasping at the contents of the letter she’d just opened.
‘No,’ Beth said, looking up at him with a broad smile. ‘Quite the opposite.’
She could hardly wait for Sam to come home to tell him the good news. Mrs Langworthy wanted her to start in the morning. She suggested that Beth work two five-hour days, as she thought this would make it easier for her to arrange for someone to take care of the baby. And she was going to pay her ten whole shillings! Beth had only got seven shillings and sixpence for working all week at the hosiery shop.
‘Our luck has finally changed, Sam,’ she yelled exuberantly the minute her brother came in. His face broke into a wide smile and he hugged her.
‘Mrs Bruce must have fallen for your charm,’ he insisted when she told him how she thought she’d talked too much. ‘I just hope Mrs Craven doesn’t get fed up with minding Molly.’
‘She said she’d be glad to have her,’ Beth said. ‘She isn’t any trouble anyway, and I’ll give her a shilling a day.’
∗
All Beth knew of how gentry lived was from what her mother had told her of her experiences in service, but she was fairly certain right from the first day at the Langworthys’ that it was a most unusual household.
She arrived at eight as arranged, and Mrs Bruce offered her a cup of tea and some toast in the basement kitchen. ‘You can’t work on an empty stomach,’ she said, ‘and I’m fairly certain you rushed here without a bite. Now, we’ll wait until Mr Edward, that’s the young Mr Langworthy, has left for the office and I’ll take you up to meet the mistress.’
Twenty minutes later, Beth was in the dining room on the ground floor where Mrs Langworthy was having her breakfast. It was at the back of the house overlooking a yard, next to the housekeeper’s sitting room where Mrs Bruce had taken her