Wait For the Dawn by Jess Foley Page A

themselves, and later, as they washed the dishes in the scullery, Ryllis said, unable to let the matter drop: ‘I don’t know how I always manage to upset Father so much, but somehow I’ve always had the talent for it.’
    ‘It’s not your fault,’ Mrs Halley said. ‘He gets into these moods when things don’t go as he expects, and then getsinto his tempers. There’s no reasoning with him at such times.’
    ‘Well,’ Ryllis said, ‘I’m afraid he’s going to get upset again, because I intend to keep my eyes open for another position.’
    When the dishes had been put away, the three left the scullery, to settle back in the kitchen. Lydia lit the newly repaired lamp and it sat on the table glowing amid them as they took to their sewing and mending. Gradually their moods lightened, and eventually they were smiling as they spoke.
    Ryllis was working on a nightdress for her mother, with the cotton that Lydia had earlier brought from Merinville. Leaning in a little closer to the lamp, trying to catch the best of the light, she began to tell of life at the Lucases’ house, and to relate anecdotes of little incidents that had taken place there. Most of her stories, Lydia was amused to observe, were those that showed Mr or Mrs Lucas in a bad light. Clearly, in Ryllis’s book there was to be no respect shown for her employers.
    ‘And there’s the time she went out to the pigsty,’ Ryllis said, speaking yet again of Mrs Lucas. ‘She had a friend visiting, and was showing off the place – but can you imagine, keeping a pig? A lawyer keeping a pig? You’d have thought they’d have enough money to buy a piece of bacon whenever they wanted it, rather than keeping a pig of their own with all the smells and the mess, but no, they have to have their own pig.’ Ryllis shook her head in contempt, and then gave a little laugh as she thought back to the incident that had given rise to her anecdote.
    ‘Anyway, there she is, Madam Lucas, one afternoon, with her visitor from Redbury or somewhere, and takes her down to the kitchen garden to show her the produce, and on the way back they stop by the pigsty. I was out in the yard at the time, having just got in some vegetables forCook, so I saw it all. Mrs Lucas had brought from the kitchen a bit of something for the pig to eat – though on normal days she never even noticed that the creature existed. But here she was, showing off her little kingdom, and stopping at the pig’s pen she leans over and tosses this bit of food for it. I don’t know exactly what happened then, but the next second she’s yelling out, “Oh, my brooch! my brooch!” and is leaning way over the rail, stretching out her hand. I ran up to see what was wrong and just at that moment – oh, my God! – just at that moment she loses her balance.’
    Ryllis gave a great hoot of laughter at the memory so fresh in her mind and put her hand to her face. ‘Oh, poor woman,’ Mrs Halley said, unable to stop herself smiling. ‘What happened? Did she fall in? Don’t say she fell in.’
    ‘No, she didn’t fall in,’ Ryllis said. ‘Unfortunately. I’d have loved it if she had, but you should have seen her none the less.’ Her words were interspersed with her peals of laughter. ‘Oh, you should have seen her. Talk about lack of dignity. There she was, trying to reach out for her brooch, which was down in the mire, but then suddenly the pig is there, snuffling up to her, all curious, and then she’s having to push the creature away, and she gets sort of stranded over the rail, so that for a second you don’t know whether she’s going over or not.’ Ryllis could barely speak now for laughing. With her arms she demonstrated how Mrs Lucas had lain across the bar, her hands swinging wildly. ‘I tell you,’ Ryllis shrieked, hardly able to get the words out, ‘she couldn’t get up. She looked like one of those beetles that land on their backs, their legs going every which way! I tell you, if you