Hope - Lesley Pearse [69]
‘I received a letter from Lady Harvey this morning,’ he said. ‘Sadly her father died in his sleep three days ago. I shall leave early tomorrow morning to be with her for the funeral. I am sure I can leave Briargate in your capable hands.’
Baines offered his condolences, then asked how Sir William would be travelling and what he would like packed.
‘Albert will take me into Bath in the trap, and I’ll catch the train from there,’ Sir William replied. ‘I won’t need to take much with me as I’ll only be gone a few days.’
Albert came into the kitchen for dinner at around twelve, and as always Martha fussed around him, this time because his coat was wet through. Hope was in the scullery cleaning some silver, and she smiled at the cook’s efforts to make him talk to her. The woman ought to have realized by now that Albert was a lost cause.
He informed Martha that he’d spent the morning sawing up the fallen oak, remarked that the river Chew was rising dangerously high again, and that it was his prediction the heavy rain would last another couple of days.
‘You mustn’t stay out in it again this afternoon,’ Martha exclaimed. ‘You might be a big strong man but that won’t stop you catching a chill!’
Albert said he’d hauled some of the big logs into the woodshed and he’d be working in there cutting them into smaller pieces so he’d be in the dry.
Hope thought he sounded less brusque than usual, almost as if he was warming to Martha. She annoyed both Hope and Baines with her constant prattle about nothing, but she did have a kind heart and she loved to feed people.
She had told Hope that when she was a young kitchen-maid, she had been walking out with a footman and they wanted to get married. Their mistress reacted in the same way as most gentry did about servants marrying, and refused permission.
Martha was over forty now, with nothing but swollen ankles, call used hands and the title of Cook to show for a lifetime of hard work. Hope was absolutely determined her life wasn’t going to be the same.
At half past three that afternoon, Martha was dozing in a chair in the servants’ hall, and Rose had just put some flat irons on the stove to press some shirts for Sir William, when Hope slipped out of the back door. It was tipping down with rain, but she thought she should go down to the gatehouse today to tidy it, for once Sir William left for Sussex she felt it was quite likely Albert would go home in the afternoons.
She hadn’t asked Baines for permission to go because she knew he would probably ask her to wait until tomorrow, and she didn’t want to admit she was afraid of running into Albert. He was pleasant enough up at the big house, but down in the gatehouse he reverted to behaving the way she remembered when she used to live there. He ordered her about as if she were his slave, and criticized everything she did.
Baines was up in Sir William’s dressing room packing for him, and as it was at the back of the house he wouldn’t see her going down the drive. With luck she’d be back before he even knew she’d gone.
The driving rain prevented her from seeing anything more than a few feet in front of her and by the time she reached the gatehouse her cloak was soaked right through and her boots were sodden. She went to the back door, found the key left under a stone, took off her cloak and boots and left them under the shelter of the porch to drip, then entered in her stockinged feet.
To her surprise the stove was alight and the cottage very warm. There was the usual mess, the table littered with plates, cups and glasses, a loaf of bread left out to grow stale, and a half-empty bottle of whisky. Albert was a terrible hypocrite: he ranted about untidiness and squalor, yet was quite happy to create it all around him.
The floor was very dirty too. Albert clearly wasn’t removing his boots any longer when