Day 2. conclusion
We took the long route to the tea-room. Nerves were still frayed and once we had arrived, tea took a long time to reach the table. Sid dithered, quite deliberately, to point out that they were very busy and short-handed, because a key member of the team was licking the arse or less metaphorically, lapping up the crumbs from the master’s table. I ignored Sid and added rules 3 and 4 to the list. Once done, Vera used the time to get me acquainted with some of her plans, which, I suspect, were only just beginning to crystallise in her mind.
'Millicent, I want you to keep a diary of our talks and give it all to me at the end of your employment. Do them in the first person. It will help me analyse your side of the argument.'
'Good idea. And we should both make a list of things to discuss and activities to do. We can compare notes tomorrow. '
'Take the rest of the morning off to get on with it. Keep the receipts for new tights and dry cleaning and let me have them. Meet me at eight tomorrow and we’ll talk tea kitchens, while I show you the house.'
She finished her tea, gave me a tender smile, waved at Sid and left the café.
I stayed on and finished the shift in the café. The sun was gaining in strength as it rose in the cloudless sky. The ancient trees scattered around the grounds were a zillion dots as the powerful breezes sent their leaves in a chaotic dance of a million greens, juxtaposed against the blue backdrop of a cloudless sky. Summer can be breath-taking.
I suppose I’m trying to say I don’t belong upstairs with Vera - downstairs is more comfortable, so long as I have a view like the one from the café! Does that make Millie a bourgeois lackey? Probably. At the moment I’m only dancing with the enemy. So long as I don’t end up sleeping with them.
Visitors were pouring in and I realised it would be a good tip day. Furthermore, Vera had spoken openly about remuneration, but hadn’t put a figure to it. ‘Never trust a rich bitch,’ my grandfather would have told me, so a shift in the café allowed me to hedge my bets a little.
We knocked off around four-thirty. Sid and I found ourselves wandering, arm in arm, back to Church Cottages. She was bursting with curiosity, annoyed that the busy lunchtime and afternoon, had made it impossible for her to catch up on the morning’s events at the house.
I filled her in on the major issues and some of the impending rows Vera and I narrowly avoided.
'But you parted best of buddies,' was her summary of the day. 'I’d have slapped the stuck-up cow, that’s for sure. And when are you going to address this Millicent nonsense? No one has ever, in the history of anywhen, called you Millicent. I nearly spat in her tea yesterday, when she kept calling me Sidonie. I made the mistake of mentioning it at home, now they are all doing it.'
I had to laugh. Mirth subsided. 'No one will ever know about Vera calling me Millicent,' I promised. 'And I can’t be too hard on her. I really put her through the wringer over her stuck-up conventions and she parried the argument using a torpedo, with ‘Marxist dialectic’ painted on the side.'
'Wow!' was all Sid could manage. 'Respect.'
Sid gave me a big hug at the gate to our cottage and walked on, past the church, to her house. To be honest, it was a bit of a hovel, stuck down in a dell with huge mature oaks and sycamore robbing the windows of daylight. Her family were dysfunctional, rarely spoke to each other and Sid couldn’t wait to leave home. I doubted anyone ribbed her over being called Sidonie. That would have meant a communication.
I watched her male walk, in baggy but fashionable dungarees, disappear behind the church fence. Her clothes, gait, the use of a boy’s name, were all part of her affectation not to be a girl. She was a tad overweight, but certainly didn’t have a boy’s figure – rather the opposite, although she never revealed her curves. And she knew she was stuck at home for the foreseeable future. Her first task was to get her younger siblings through school and keep them off drugs and alcohol, for they were the vices that took most young villagers, who didn’t have functioning parents. There were plenty. Sometimes I think rural poverty is worse than being poor in the towns.
Her sexual orientation remained a mystery even to me, her best friend, perhaps her only friend. The other teenagers and twenty-somethings in the village had her down as a raving lesbian. I was only spared the same accusation due to my lascivious lifestyle, which made me something of a celebrity among the lads. Sid always took my arm, hugged me and kissed me lingeringly on the cheek when she got the chance, but she never overstepped the mark and embarrassed me. One day I will discuss things with her and find her a boyfriend, which I think, is what she really wants. But having driven herself into the ‘butch dyke’ corner by playing the butch dyke for the last decade, the lads were understandably a bit reluctant.
I took out the notepad Vera had given me, which from now on I’ll call ‘Vera’s notepad,’ and wrote in it, ‘Discuss Sid’s problem with Vera!’
My Dad pulled the ancient van into the drive and stopped by the poultry. He looked over at me as if he were expecting me to be downcast. I grinned back and gave him a big thumbs up. I had mastered my first day, working as a lady in waiting, or as Vera preferred, a companion.
Why not just be friends?
Our two mismatched friends have found a way to get along. Now, Millie has to teach Vera to make tea, and before that, how to plumb in a kitchen.
Day 3. Wednesday Sometime in the night, a cold, intense drizzle began to blow across the fens. My bedroom window is covered in a fine mist. Where did that change in the weather come from? Yesterday was glorious. That meant that few visitors would turn out, so they wouldn’t want me in the café – no big deal if Vera paid me – but Sid would be in desperate straits if they sent her home without working a shift. She was, as far as I knew, the only earner in the family. Now was the time to regret my outburst yesterday, when I more or less told Vera she should stuff the rotten Land Rover where the sun don’t shine. As my Granddad would tell me, should I bump into him, a second-class ride is better than a first class walk, especially in such weather. I found my screwed-up rain gear in the bottom of the wardrobe, under my muddy boots, so I was guaranteed to look a sight. I could only hope it would rain hard enough to wash the mud
Day 4 - Thursday Vera was into her DIY big-time. The rain front from yesterday hadn’t cleared East Anglia. There was no BMW waiting at the end of the garden so I walked to the House in horizontal rain, couldn’t have kept a new umbrella up in the wind, never mind my scarecrow number. I was soaked as I came through the magnificent oak front door, and left a dripping trail past the grizzly bears and across the carpet with the coat of arms every ten inches. I heard someone whistling ‘Walking in the rain.’ Charley was more than amused. ‘Oh, Millie! How the mighty are fallen? All it took was a bit of flat-pack and you are history.’ ‘Piss off, you smart arse. What stopped you picking me up? I assume she has assembled the units and is now wondering what to do next.’ He grinned even wider. ‘You’re to join her upstairs, in the grey room.’ I looked baffled. All our rooms at home look grey. ‘Top of the stairs and
Day 5. Friday.I had never discussed a work contract with Vera. Day one had been a Monday, which hadn’t really been a working day. Tuesday I’d moonlighted in the café so maybe Vera wouldn’t pay me for that either. And I don’t know if I am working weekends or not. She said I would be paid monthly and that would be a nightmare.As I walked up the wide gravel path to the huge oak door, I decided I would have to talk dirty with Vera - at least she would consider talking about money to be talking dirty, but it had to be done. I would have to ask Vera for a sub.I found her in her apartment, with her head in the cupboard under the newly fitted sink. She was whispering something to herself and it ended with a ladylike ‘drat’. Did she only swear to impress me?'Anything the matter, Vera?'She jerked her head upwards and caught it on the sink wi
Day 6. Saturday.Vera’s unpleasant reaction to Sid wanting to ride left Friday with an incongruous end and made me forget to ask her for a sub. More immediately important - was I was supposed to work Saturdays and Sundays. I had forgotten to clarify that as well. I’m as bad as the rest of the village. Give me a bit of gossip to chew on and I forget the world beyond Lower Butts. We are so parochial!There was no other option, but at 7.43, to drag my lazy butt down the garden path and head for the House. I didn’t get further than the gate, for there was Sid with tears streaming down her face, quivering bottom lip, looking imploringly at me. I took her arm and started walking her towards the church yard. At least that would rule out a lover’s tiff if we were seen arm in arm, for there were sure to be nosey neighbours peering between net curtains. I’d have
We spent the afternoon sorting out a couple of riding habits. I learnt that what is worn nowadays are called jodhpurs. The boots were awesome and would have made kinky bedroom attire. During the afternoon we had to go to a friend’s house. I was driven by Vera to the next village in her BMW. Vera’s friend had two daughters and hence a collection of ball-gowns. The girls were away at boarding school, so would not be needing gowns.By the time I met Sid for our walk home, I was fully equipped – mentally and physically – for the execution of Vera’s scheme. The physical bit I would like to have saved myself. The bag with riding outfits, including boots, and the two ball-gowns were more than I could carry, so I was pleased to palm the gowns off on Sid.She looked mistrustfully at the packet and then asked, 'What actually is in this bin-liner?''Two ball-gowns. We are going to do it.''We are so not going to go to either the hunt or
Day 7.Sunday.I’ve got myself in a corner of my own making. Should I go to the House as though nothing had happened? Was I expected there on a Sunday? Should I go to the café? It was another beautiful day. There would be enough work, but maybe Sid and I had burned our bridges there, too. Should I stay in bed and say, ‘Sod the lot of them?’Then I had a genial idea. Go to church!I hadn’t been to church since being chucked out of Brownies for swearing, and when Brown Owl chastised me, I blasphemed, which was obviously much worse than the F-word. I knew enough about Vera’s habits to know she always went to church when she was ‘at home’.I imagined asking Sid.'Is it tactically better to be early or late for church?''You never go to church. What’s got into you? But late is better.''It’s an opportunit
Vera should have called ‘Sultan.’ I had just lied to her for the second time in our friendship. Of course, I had been taken in by her offer, was flattered by the opportunity to play at the big table, had found her logic, that one shouldn’t turn an experience down without having tried it, convincing and conscience calming. So, I kept quiet about my unprincipled slide into ‘Vera’s Way’, and continued. 'Sid put me right. What we want and need is not a seat at the posh table. It’s a job with proper living wage that allows us a functioning family life, without overtime, but with children-time instead. Do you know that Mrs Gormley-Stuart cancelled an order for a thousand lobelia - worth perhaps two hundred quid - and it is a big deal for my father? That can’t be the world we want to live in.' 'I know. She told us, last coffee morning.' 'She told you what?' I shrieked. 'Why would my father’s nursery business be of interest to you or your ladies, at a snobby bun-figh
We drove in silence the leafy way to Sid’s cottage. How odd life is? Sid was the girl I’d called a friend since we were eleven, and I was about to visit her house for the first time. I should have asked her questions earlier, but that may have ruined more than it solved. Perhaps her flee into butch dress was to prevent any lads getting the idea to call on her. The recent kiss on the lips, the offer to sleep with Vera, the claimed knowledge that Vera was lesbian? Could it all be to maintain her defences and keep people from her private sphere? Then again, she may be trying to come out to me. I figured I could solve some of the riddle by asking Vera. 'Do you bat for both sides, Vera?' My timing was awful. We were following the old road, which was a tiny, single tree-lined track, through the outskirts of the village. We arrived at the cottage seconds after I spoke and Vera ignored my question. 'Well, do you?' I tried again as she swung from the car. 'Wha