If You Were the Only Girl. Anne Bennett
as she said, ‘Well, Mrs O’Leary said you were small and I must say I agree with her.’
Lucy thought it better to agree with the woman. ‘Yes, my lady.’
‘Mrs O’Leary also said you have trouble at home. That your father is dead.’
Lucy nodded. ‘He had TB, my lady,’ she said. ‘But he had been ill a long time before he was taken to the sanatorium.’
Her eyes clouded suddenly at the memory of him and Lady Heatherington saw this. ‘I understand that things have been very difficult, but yours is not the only family to have hit hard times,’ she said.
‘No, my lady.’
‘And I am not running a charity.’
‘No, my lady.’
‘Mrs O’Leary has said that you come from a hard-working family and that you are respectable and honest.’
Lucy didn’t know how to answer this so she stayed silent and Lady Heatherington continued, ‘And while they are honourable qualities and ones I would expect of all those in my employ, I am worried that one of your stature would be unequal to the work in the kitchen. Are you not concerned about that?’
Lucy was very concerned, but for her family’s sake she had to have this job and so she answered firmly, ‘No, I’m not, my lady, because I am a lot stronger than I look.’
‘Hmm,’ Lady Heatherington said. ‘I am not at all sure.’ She sighed and stared at Lucy as if deliberating, and she then burst out, ‘Oh, all right then. For Mrs O’Leary’s sake I am willing to give you a trial, but I will be getting regular reports from our cook, Mrs Murphy, and if she’s not happy then you must leave.’ A faint smile touched her lips for a moment as she said, ‘I have learnt to my cost it doesn’t do to offend one’s cook.’
Lucy suppressed her sigh of relief and said, ‘No, my lady. Thank you, my lady.’
‘Now, you will take your orders from Mrs Murphy direct and you must do whatever she tells you. She is in charge in the kitchen and you are under her jurisdiction.’
Lucy nodded. ‘Yes, my lady.’ She had no intention of doing anything to upset the woman she was already nervous of.
‘Now, as for uniform,’ Lady Heatherington said, ‘you will be given a grey dress and apron that you will wear at all times, and any we have will have to be altered to fit you. Can you sew?’
‘Oh, yes, my lady.’
‘Good,’ said Lady Heatherington. ‘Then you will attend to your uniform immediately in your spare time, for I will not have anyone slovenly attired in my household.’
‘No, my lady.’
‘All right, Cassidy. You may return to the kitchen.’
‘Thank you, my lady,’ Lucy said, bobbing another curtsy before she made for the door. She was glad to find Clara outside ready to escort her back. Lucy told her what had transpired in the library and she nodded.
‘You’ll soon settle in,’ she said, ‘and if you work hard you and Cook will soon be the best of friends. Now, first things first,’ she continued as they reached the kitchen again. ‘Young Jerry here will take your case up to the attic you will share with Evie and Clodagh.’
Lucy remembered what Clara had said about Jerry Kilroy and so she wasn’t surprised when, catching her eye, he winked at her. A man had never winked at Lucy before and she blushed slightly and was suddenly glad she had a decent case for she would have hated to have been shown up in front of this cocky footman.
Clodagh, though, was different altogether. She was sixteen and Lucy thought she looked really pretty with tight brown curls framing her face and a smile of welcome shining out from her brown eyes, and she was glad that she would see a lot of her. She had come from Ballintra, outside Donegal Town, a place not that much bigger than Mountcharles, which made another thing they had in common.
Evie, who was seventeen, came from the Donegal Town itself and she was just as pleasant as Clodagh, and as pretty, with her dark blonde hair and eyes of deepest blue.
‘You won’t see quite so much of me because my duties are in the house, you see, and so I don’t need to come into the kitchen much,’ she explained to Lucy. ‘I came in today to meet you when Mrs O’Leary told me you had arrived.’
‘You’ll see her at mealtimes,’ Clodagh said. ‘All the servants eat together.’
‘Yes, and we will all share the attic, though I don’t suppose that will bother you.’
Lucy shook her head, for she had never had a room or even a bed to herself in the whole of her life. ‘No. Not at all.’
‘Well, there you are, then, and in no time at all I’m sure we will be the best of friends.’
Lucy hoped so, for she had never really had a friend before and after meeting both girls she felt far more positive about working in Windthorpe Lodge.
Even Cook spoke to her far more civilly when she said, ‘Clara was saying that your father died six months ago, but she said he had been bad for some time.’
Lucy nodded. ‘Ages. He had TB.’
Cook knew about TB, that insidious illness that could wipe out whole families. Clara had told her of the poverty the family lived in because Seamus hadn’t been able to work for some years before he died, and certainly, Lucy Cassidy didn’t look as though she had ever had a decent meal in her life. So Cook said, ‘Well, though we will all eat later, I will not put anyone to work on an empty stomach. So how about-you go to the attic with Clodagh and put your uniform on, for all it will drown you for now, and I will cook you some eggs and bacon to keep you going?’
Eggs and bacon! Lucy’s mouth watered at the very thought of it and she nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, oh, yes. Thank you.’
The cook smiled at Lucy’s enthusiasm, and Clodagh said, ‘Come on, then.’
She led the way up the back stairs and as she did so she said, ‘Your face was a picture when Cook mentioned cooking you bacon and eggs.’
‘That’s because I can’t really remember what either tastes like,’ Lucy said.
Clodagh stopped on the stairs and looked into Lucy’s face. ‘Honestly?’
‘Honestly,’ Lucy answered. ‘When Daddy was first sick, Mammy turned the garden over to grow vegetables, and we have hens as well, but the eggs are not for us to eat. Mammy needed them and the surplus vegetables that she barters at the shop in exchange for flour, oatmeal, candles and other things she couldn’t grow.’
‘Oh, that’s awful,’ Clodagh said. ‘Well, you needn’t worry here. Cook keeps a good table and now she probably sees it as her life’s work to feed you up because that’s the type of person she is. She is much kinder than she appears. But now we’d better get you dressed up properly for the kitchen or, despite what I just said, if we take too long we’ll get the rough edge of her tongue. She can’t abide slacking.’
Suddenly Clodagh stopped on a sort of landing. ‘Our bedroom is up those stairs,’ she said, indicating another flight. ‘This is the linen press where our overalls and uniforms are kept.’ She opened the door set into the wall as she spoke, and Lucy saw the overalls folded in piles and uniforms hung on hangers at the back. ‘Cook says the Mistress is a stickler about uniform if you are ever to be seen by the family, and even more so if they have guests for dinner, but I doubt we have a uniform to fit you.’ She held aloft a light grey dress as she spoke and went on, ‘This seems to be about the smallest. Let’s pop upstairs and you can try it on.’
Lucy was agreeable to that because she was anxious at any rate to see what the room was like, and in that, too, she was pleasantly surprised. It had whitewashed walls, which Lucy thought a good idea when the only light came from the skylight, and though the room was small, good use had been made of the available space, which