A Mother’s Gift: Two Classic Novels. Josephine Cox

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       Chapter 7

      UNAWARE OF DEVELOPMENTS at home, Lucy drove her energy into the last task of the day. ‘Almost done now,’ she told the curious magpie who had been watching her for the past ten minutes or so. ‘Another few good wallops, and there won’t be a speck of dust left.’

      Raising the beater, she brought it down against the rug so hard that it danced on the clothes-line; another good hard wallop, and the dust flew in all directions, not as much as when she had first brought the rug out, but enough to give her a coughing fit, and send the startled magpie off to the skies.

      ‘Cowardly creature!’ she called after it. ‘Mind, if I had wings, I’d be off too.’ Oh, and she would an’ all! Away above the chimney-tops ever so high, she would raise her head and flap her wings fast and furious until she was across the oceans, then she’d keep going until she reached some tropical paradise. But she wouldn’t go alone, oh no. Wherever she went, she would take her darling son with her.

      From the office window upstairs, the tall, elegant woman watched Lucy as she worked; the squire’s secretary could hear Lucy’s voice raised in song, but that wasn’t unusual, because during her working day, whether inside or out, Lucy’s melodious singing could be heard all over Haskell Hall. ‘You’re a good soul, Lucy Baker,’ Miss McGuire murmured, putting down her fountain-pen. ‘Hardworking and happy as the day is long.’

      As she watched Lucy hoist the rug from the line and drop it to the ground, she was taken by surprise when the girl suddenly looked up to see her there. ‘I won’t be long,’ she called out. ‘I’m finished just now.’

      Lucy quickened her steps towards the house, the hot breeze playing with the hem of her skirt, her feet bare as the day she was born; with the rug carried in her arms, like a mother might carry a bairn, she made a fetching sight.

      When a moment or two later, Lucy burst into the kitchen, Miss McGuire was waiting for her. ‘For the life of me, Lucy, I don’t know why you beat the rug when you could use that new vacuum cleaner. It was bought to suck up the dirt and dust from the floor, after all, and to save the staff here from heavy work.’

      ‘I do use it,’ Lucy protested, ‘but it’s not very good. Sometimes things get stuck in it and it won’t work, and then old Jake has to see to it, and while he’s doing that I still have to beat the rugs.’ She prodded the one in her arms. ‘This one is no good at all. It’s got long fringes and they go flying up into the workings and then it’s the devil’s own job to free them. It’s much quicker just to give it a sound beating on the clothes-line.’

      The squire’s secretary tended to agree, but did not say so. Instead she looked down at Lucy’s bare feet. Small and neat, they were covered in a film of dust, and there was the tiniest leaf sticking out between the toes. ‘Never mind the rug,’ she retorted. ‘Perhaps you’d like to tell me why you aren’t wearing your boots?’ Exasperated at the times she had asked the young woman to always wear her boots for fear of hurting herself on the harsh ground, she groaned. ‘Just look at your poor feet, Lucy … covered in dust and picking up all the debris from the ground. One of these days you’re bound to get an injury. I’ve asked you so many times to wear your work-boots, I’m worn out with it.’

      Lucy looked down at her feet. ‘I’m a mucky pup, I know,’ she conceded, wiggling her toes to be rid of the leaf, ‘but I feel so uncomfortable with the boots on. I’m sorry, Miss McGuire. I’ll try to wear them, I promise.’

      ‘And how many times have you said that?’ The secretary rolled her eyes. ‘And how many times have I seen you running about in your bare feet? It isn’t as though you’re a child, Lucy. You’re a grown woman of nearly thirty, for heaven’s sake, and you have a little one to think of. What would happen if something fell on your feet and broke them? How would you go on then, eh?’

      ‘I know, and I’m really sorry,’ Lucy repeated. ‘I promise I’ll try to keep the shoes on.’ Lucy hated wearing shoes of any kind, almost as much as she hated cold porridge.

      ‘Mind you do then.’ The secretary was a kindly sort. She had little to do with the housekeeper’s staff here at the Hall, but she had always had a soft spot for Lucy.

      ‘Anyway, enough of this. It’s time you went home,’ she told Lucy now. ‘There hasn’t been a day in the past fortnight when you’ve left on time.’

      ‘That’s ’cause I like to finish all my work before I go,’ Lucy explained.

      ‘I know that, all too well,’ came the reply. ‘But you must leave time for yourself … and the child.’ The secretary tried hard not to be shocked by the young woman’s situation as an unmarried mother. The squire never listened to gossip so he remained ignorant of Jamie’s existence; СКАЧАТЬ