King of the Sea

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Five minutes later the housekeeper, Mrs Johnson, ushered indeed thrust an apprehensive Emma Harding into Hilda's presence. She sat in the bay window, a prim, dark monolith of righteous indignation. She motioned for the maid to stand before her, some six feet away, and then told Mrs Johnson that would be all. The housekeeper, who could not stoop to eavesdropping in front of the other servants, fled at once to the nether regions of the house - knowing that Nancy and Maria would glue an ear to the door and an eye to the keyhole. The mistress's moods were the weather of the house; to study their changes was as important to the servants as was the mariner's scrutiny of the clouds and winds.

"What have you been telling my daughter?" Hilda asked severely.

"Nothing, m'm." In the year she had been in this house Emma had never seen the mistress like this. Something warned her the moment she entered the room that, no matter what she might now say, she was for the chuck. An odd sort of calm descended on her - or was it a dread too large, too formless for her to apprehend all at once?

"Liar!" Hilda snapped.

Emma gaped at her. It was a dread too large and formless to grasp; it left her, for the moment, anæsthetized. She felt almost as if she were outside her own body, hovering somewhere, watching it all without the slightest feeling. She heard her voice say.

"D'you mean about the flowers, m'm?"

"Flowers?" It was a moment or two before Hilda recalled the euphemism, which had been common in her own youth. "Yes!" she snapped.

"I only told Miss Catherine that I always felt worse the days before, m'm, and if I did wrong in that, then I'm truly sorry and will strive to mend my ways, for there was no wickedness intended, I assure you m'm."

Hilda sat there while the flood of practised insincerities poured over her. She felt the initiative drain away as the girl's utter submission, combined with vague notions of fair play and the ideal of the merciful Christian mistress, all tugged at her compassion. The trouble was, she'd always had a liking for young Emma. Such a pretty girl. She'd always felt a great sympathy for pretty girls, having been one herself and knowing what a nuisance it can be and the bothersome attentions it brought. Even her own son Lawrence, dragging the poor young maid into the doorway for a kiss last Christmas ...

But she was wandering again - losing the initiative. This time she must not dither. "You said more than that, I believe," she snapped.

Francis would be proud to hear her. He often said she lacked that extra bit of steel in her backbone. Talking of which, the steel in her corsets... she shook the distraction angrily away and prompted the maid: "Well?"

Emma frowned. She was now quite certain she was going to be dismissed; the only negotiable item was her character. Surely Mrs Troy wouldn't let her go without a character? "I truly can't remember saying more than what I just told you I done, m'm," she declared.

"Not that ... that..." Hilda began an angry search for suitable euphemisms."... that the arrival of 'your friend' was the happiest omen?" "Omen?"

"Sign. Event. Occurrence. Did you not tell her it made you very happy?" "No, m'm. Honest. I may have said it was a relief,

but ..." "Relief! Relief! Will you hark at the baggage! How dare you put such notions into the head of that

innocent and pure young dove? Relief, indeed!" Aghast, Emma now saw where her inept choice of words had led her. "But I never meant relief like that, m'm. I only meant relief from the discomfort and that, you know the days before, like what I said was - you know..." She lost her way in a many branching delta of confusions. "Well I'm sorry, Harding, but I simply don't believe

you. Wouldn't it just tickle your degraded sense of humour to put such wicked thoughts, all in the guise of ..." "Degraded?" Emma asked. The first hint of anger

crept into her tone.

"Don't you dare interrupt me!" Hilda barked. "Do you dare question me?"

"Did you call me degraded?" Emma asked, now bold enough to square up to her formidable challenger. "I said you have a degraded sense of humour,"

Hilda explained. Why did it now sound like a softening of the opinion? "Yes!" she snapped. "If you want it unadorned, I believe that anyone who tells an innocent young girl that 'flowers' spells relief is degraded. Anyway, I'm not here to bandy words with such a creature. I simply wish you to be out of this house by this evening."

The expected sentence was nonetheless a shock. Emma could only stand and stare. "Surely you're not surprised?" Hilda pressed home

her advantage.

It was a moment when anything could happen. Emma knew that if she went down on her knees, she knew flung her arms about her mistress, sank her head in her lap, sobbed, begged to keep her place.... Hilda Troy well enough to be quite sure she'd capitulate. There'd be a tearful scene... hugs... she might even get a kiss on the brow; and a week later it would all be forgotten. She was a strange one, all right. Always trying to stir up feelings, touching you, giving your arm a reassuring squeeze over nothing. And you knew she couldn't help it; that's the way she was. Even now, with this terrible sentence just pronounced - a sentence to poverty and a genuine degradation if no character were forthcoming - even now, she could not find it in herself to hate the woman. Pity, yes. But how could you hate someone so trapped by her own feelings?

A mischievous imp urged her to do it. "Go on, gel!" it said. "You wouldn't feel a thing. It's the only power you've got over her - twist her heart! She'd be putty in your hands."

But the horror of becoming the sort of person who could obey such impulses restrained her. And behind it lay an even vaguer dread: that, though she might very easily bend Hilda Troy to her will, there would, nonetheless, be some nameless emotional debt to discharge at some indeterminate point in the future. In the end the intimation of that formless but powerful obligation stopped her ears to all impish suggestions. "And my character, m'm?" she asked as meekly as she could.

"Character?" Hilda asked incredulously. "You may whistle for it!" Why had the girl's response left her so bitter and angry? What else had she expected? She was now, quite possibly, ruining the maid's life. No! She dismissed the thought out of hand. The wretched creature had brought it on herself. Never overlook that. She had brought it on herself.

Emma licked her lips. "And I'm due the month's wages, m'm." "You may whistle for that, too."

The bonds of humility snapped. Emma stood up

straight. "That's not fair!" Hilda rose hastily, bringing herself to the same height as the maid. "As I said, I'm not going to bandy words. I want you gone by this evening."

"Gone? Where? Where shall I go? You know I can't go anywhere without money and a character." Hilda brushed past her. "By this evening," she

repeated. Nancy and Maria just made it to the safety of the master's dressing room; they stared at each other in wide-eyed bewilderment and fanned their faces with spread-eagled hands.

Hilda went out onto the landing, leaving the door ajar behind her. She grasped the banister rail and stared down into the empty hall, which the long-case clock filled with its deep, imperturbable tick, tock, tick, tock Such a comforting resonance it had; it had counted out the seconds in just those tones for as long as she could remember for it had followed her

here from her childhood home.

All those seconds! And you couldn't call even one of them back what was the poem?

Never mind Francis would be proud of her. Why did she not feel better for knowing that?

Behind her, Emma simply stood and stared at that imperturbable back. She had just discovered how you could, after all, hate someone who was such a victim of her own feelings. "Right then," she said to herself. "You started it!"