In Maggie’s Wheelbarrow, which is my contribution to Merry Belles, the next Bluestocking Belles Christmas Collection, my heroine takes a job at a house party.
The hope of soon being reunited with Will, or at least reaching his mother, had kept Maggie moving along the winding roads from Portsmouth to the first village of Ashton in the Midlands. When that proved to be the wrong place, she changed her strategy. Winter was coming. Even now, the heat was gone from the long evenings as soon as the sun dipped below the horizon. If she had to find lodgings for herself and the children during the winter, then she must make more than the few coins she had picked up on her way north.
Having made the decision between one village and the next, she put it into practice at the first opportunity, asking at both inns and the three major houses if there was any work available.
One of the inns took her on to clean rooms and empty slop pails. For one week, she told them. After that, she said, she must be off once more on her search. With Eva on her back and Billy tagging behind, she managed the heavy work with ease, and a week later set off the next Ashton with several more shillings in her purse and a warmer coat for each child to keep them comfortable in the sometimes-cold wind.
The second Ashton was as disappointing as the first, but Maggie got two night’s work at the inn, and moved on the third. Thus it went through the autumn and on into early winter. When the snow came, she would have to be settled, but meanwhile, she moved from village to village, stopping to work whenever her money ran low, and at every village called Ashton or something similar, asking for the Parker family. All to no avail.
She was between Ashtons in early December when, on the strength of a stint as a maid at yet another inn, she was offered temporary work at the local great house, where they needed extra servants during a house party. At first, she thought she’d have to turn the job down, though the wages were excellent. But another woman overheard her telling the hiring steward about her children.
“I reckon they could stay with Ma,” she said. “She’s looking after me own young uns, while I earn a few coins, so two more wouldn’t matter to her none, and she could do with the pennies.” The woman introduced herself as Frannie, and offered to take Maggie to visit “Ma” immediately.
“If she could put you up at night,” said the steward, “I shall add two shillings a day to the wages, for where I could find you a bed, I do not know. Mind you, you’ll have to be at your post by five in the morning, and will not be home until after the guests have had their dinner.”
Frannie’s mother proved to be a kind woman whom Eva took to straight away, and the other children were twins of Billy’s age, so Maggie went off to work the following morning with a light heart. If she saw out the two weeks of the house party, she would earn the princely sum of eighteen shillings! Four shillings of that would go Frannie’s mother, but fourteen shillings would feed her little family for weeks, if she was careful.
It was hard work, but in some ways, it was also a holiday. No walking for hours with Eva on her back and the wheelbarrow before her. No need to find dry spaces through the day to feed the children or to change a wet clout. And she enjoyed the walks with Frannie in the pre-dawn quiet and the velvet dark of the late evening.