Free Ann Granger by The Companion

she left so suddenly.’
    ‘Yes, miss. But Mrs Parry gave us her clothes what she left behind her.’
    By ‘us’ I assumed she meant all the servants. The picture of them dividing up the belongings of my predecessor was not a pretty one.
    ‘Shall I get on then?’ The maid held up her dustpan and brush.
    I should not have asked the girl questions. She would certainly report my interest below stairs. Besides, I was holding her up. So I simply asked her what her name was. She told me it was Wilkins. I thanked her and left her to her work, taking myself back to my room. People wandering around under the servants’ feet first thing in the day were obviously a nuisance. I should have to learn to get up later.
    Wilkins did not forget my request, however. I had not been
back in my room above ten minutes when a knock at the door heralded the kitchen girl in the mob cap I’d seen earlier, this time staggering under a can of hot water. Seen close at hand, the girl looked no more than twelve years of age but might have been thirteen. She was of scrawny build with the pinched look of children who have grown up ill-nourished and probably born to mothers themselves half-starved. To tell the age of such a child is difficult.
    ‘Why, what is your name?’ I asked.
    ‘Bessie, miss,’ she replied, pushing up the mob cap which had worked its way down over her eyes.
    ‘Oh,’ I said, taking the can from her before she spilled it. It was very heavy and difficult to imagine how her thin little arms had managed to haul it up three flights of stairs from the basement. ‘So you are called Elizabeth, as I am.’
    At this I got a similar perplexed look to the one I’d had from Wilkins earlier. Bessie frowned and said she didn’t think she’d ever been called Elizabeth. As far as she knew, her name had always been Bessie. They’d called her that at the orphanage.
    So, a charity child. At least the institution had kept her from the streets and trained her well enough to go into service.
    ‘I saw you earlier,’ I said, ‘from my window. You were buying milk.’
    Bessie sniffed. ‘I don’t reckon much to that milk. Mrs Simms, she will buy it because, she says, if you see it come from the cow you know it hasn’t been watered. There is a feller comes round with a cart and milk churns, but Mrs Simms, she don’t trust him.’
    ‘Why don’t you, er, reckon to the cow’s milk, Bessie?’
    ‘It stinks,’ said Bessie. ‘It’s what they feeds them poor animals on, cabbage stalks and rubbish from the markets mostly. I don’t never drink milk.’
    I managed not to laugh as I didn’t want to offend her. She seemed such a sturdily independent little soul, for all her waif-like appearance.

    ‘Do you remember your parents, Bessie? Before you went to the orphanage?’
    ‘No,’ said Bessie briefly.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I told her.
    Bessie brightened. ‘I was left in a church, in a box with Newman’s Pork Pies written on it. So they give me the name Newman because I didn’t have no other and I don’t know why they called me Bessie. Still, could’ve been worse, couldn’t it?’
    On that philosophical note she vanished through the door.
     
    When I finally found my way downstairs for the second time it was gone eight o’clock. Breakfast was set out in the smaller dining room as I had guessed it would be. Frank Carterton was already there, eating heartily and apparently none the worse for his night on the tiles. Indeed his mood seemed markedly improved since we had parted company the previous evening, his fit of the sulks quite forgotten.
    ‘Good morning!’ he greeted me cheerfully. ‘You’re an early bird. You won’t see Aunt Julia downstairs before midday, believe me.’ He gestured at the meat salvers now laden with a couple of cold joints. ‘I’m afraid I’ve finished the best of the beef and you’ll find what’s left rather scrappy. But there is plenty of boiled ham on the bone there. Or I recommend Mrs Simms’ excellent