Chapter 3 Work at Beckfoot
The household consisted of Mrs B, her two very lively little girls, Miss Ruth and Miss Peggy, the girls' nurse and a housemaid. Mrs B's bachelor brother, Mr Turner, also had a room in the house. He used to travel the world. Sometimes a letter would come telling us that he was coming for a visit. Everyone would be looking forward to seeing him. He was such a high-spirited man with no side to him at all. Once he'd greeted his sister and nieces, he'd put his head round the kitchen door and say, "Hello, Cook! What have you been up to while I've been away?" Sometimes he would turn up out of the blue. Turn-up Turner I called him. I was to be cooking for the six, or seven, when Mr Turner was there, of us. Unlike in the big house, where I worked before, we all were to have more or less the same meals, except the children had early tea. It wasn't to be very fancy cooking.
Mrs B was a good employer. She respected my experience. She would order the meals and let me run my kitchen my way. When she wanted something done different, it would always be, "Please, Cook, if you don't mind." The housemaids came and went. They were always young girls, although you might call some of them young madams. One or two of them were very flighty. I tried to remember how I'd felt, leaving home and finding myself at everybody's beck and call.
Once or twice a year the whole household was upset. Mrs B and Mr Turner's aunt, Miss Turner, came to stay. She was a severe woman, very stiff in her ways. She took over Mrs B's role as head of the household. She was very brusque, issuing orders to us servants and criticising the slightest thing. She seemed to have some sort of hold over Mrs B, and Mr Turner, if he was in residence at the time. I didn't exactly see eye to eye with Miss Turner. Nearly every time she came, she almost drove me to giving in my notice. Mrs B would say quietly to me, "Please, just keep going, Cook. She'll be off back to Harrogate soon and Beckfoot will be back to normal." If I hadn't known, in my heart of hearts, that Mrs B was such a good sort and if I hadn't been so fond of the two lasses, I would have left my good position. I think Miss Turner did drive away at least one of the housemaids, carping on about whether she cleaned the dining room or the drawing room first, or had eaten a left-over biscuit or some such.
It's a pity Mr Turner never married and had kids. He was an excellent uncle to his two fatherless nieces. He would take them out on the lake in a rowing boat. One summer he bought them a sailing boat and was out everyday teaching them how to sail. They took to sailing and, I understand, became proficient quite quickly, but, what do I know about sailing? Mrs B let them go and camp on one of the islands, on their own. Now, I would never accuse Mrs B of being negligent, but not many mothers would have allowed a couple of young girls to do that. She was probably right. They never come to no harm. I used to give them meat pies, cake and other food for their picnicking. They liked my homemade lemonade, too. It was about this time that Miss Ruth decided she wanted to be called Nancy. I don't know what made her do that, something to do with their boat and its name. She'd be quite fierce, in her pleasant, friendly way, if you forgot and called her Ruth, as we were all accustomed to do. I think Ruth is a nice name and it's a biblical name. I'm pretty sure there's no Nancy in the bible, nor even a Saint Nancy.
One year they met and chummed up with some visiting children who also liked sailing. They were called Walker, but Miss Nancy and Miss Peggy always called them the Swallows, after Mr Jackson's boat, which he let them use. Very well brought up and polite they were. The Swallows came to visit the Lakes again and again to meet up with Miss Nancy and Miss Peggy and join in their sailing and camping games. One winter the lake froze over. Miss Nancy got mumps and Miss Peggy, the Swallows and another couple of visiting children, the Callum children, had to be quarantined.
The Callum boy, Master Dick, was a bit of a brainbox. One hot summer he fixed up a gadget so that the Beckfoot homing pigeons rang a bell. The bell gave me such a fright. I dropped a tray of china. It all turned out for the best in the end. One of the pigeons brought a message about a fell fire and Mrs B was able to alert Colonel Jolys, a pompous, snobby man, in my opinion, and his fire fighters and, pompous or not, they put out the fire without much damage being done. It was that same summer that Mr Turner's friend, Mr Stedding, arrived in the area.
The next summer Mrs B got a very bad dose of 'flu. Mr Turner decided to take her away to foreign parts to recuperate. It's all right for some! I was left in charge of Mrs B's girls and Master Dick and Miss Dorothea Callum, who were coming to stay. Who should get wind of the arrangement but Miss Turner? Several people locally commented that she always brought trouble with her. In her interfering way, she decided I wasn't good enough to look after the girls, who I'd known since they were young. She came to take over the household without so much as a by-your-leave. Miss Nancy didn't want her great-aunt to know about the visitors. Why anyone would worry about those two nice, well-behaved children staying at Beckfoot, I don't know. Miss Nancy was determined and fair rushed me off my feet. The Callum children were rushed up the fellside to a hut, to manage on their own, secretly.
One day, Miss Turner went missing. We were all sure that she'd done herself in. She was gone all night. Colonel Jolys organised a hunt for her body. I was beside myself with worry about the old lady. Then, when Colonel Jolys and his men were all gathered on the Beckfoot lawn and he was giving instructions, Miss Dorothea and Master Dick come sailing up the river with Miss Turner, as right as rain, in their boat.
I really shouldn't have let those two young ones go and fend for themselves, but when it was all over, and Mrs B and Mr Turner came home, Mrs B laughed and said to me that nothing awful had happened. It didn't matter whether it was the right decision or not. All's well that ends well.
By this time, Mr Stedding was living on Mr Turner's houseboat with him. That is, when neither of them were away on their travels. If it got really cold in the winter, they'd both come and stay at Beckfoot. We started calling the spare bedroom Mr Stedding's room.
