A Safe Harbour Read Online Free PDF Page A

where no one could match her.  
    Her mother had been overjoyed when Jane had shown she had an aptitude not only for plain sewing but for embroidery, too. Those skills along with her passion for clothes had deemed her suitable, in her mother’s eyes, for work in a big house, and as a lady’s maid at that. Well spoken and well dressed, Jane had had no trouble securing a position first as an upstairs maid and very soon as personal maid and companion to the daughter of the house. And now that Miss Geraldine had married and left home, Jane had become maid to Mrs Coulson herself.  
    The house where she worked was the Jesmond mansion of Ralph Coulson, an eminent Newcastle solicitor. Jane loved it there. And she never tired of bringing home tales of the beautiful furniture and draperies, the fine china and the paintings on the walls. Commissioned by a ‘real’ artist, she had told her mother.  
    ‘Well, one day, I may sell the dresses,’ Jane said now. ‘But meanwhile I’ll sew them into a couple of old sheets and leave them in the cupboard in my room here.’  
    ‘All right, pet. But don’t leave it too long. Fashions change, as you keep telling me. Let a respectable time go by and then you could advertise them in the newspaper. I’ve seen it done.’  
    ‘I suppose so.’  
    ‘And it would be a shame for such bonny frocks to be wasted – to never see the light of day – wouldn’t it?’  
    ‘You’re right.’ Jane finished her tea and dabbed at her mouth with her napkin. Her mother had always set a nice table. Not for her the bare scrubbed table or the oilcloth to be found in the fisherfolk’s cottages. Florence Harrison had poured all her energies into her home and Jane had been brought up in comfort and a certain amount of style.  
    Florence had seen how hard the other lasses of the village had to work and she was determined her daughter’s life would be different. She hoped that in town there would be opportunities to meet a different sort of young man from the lads Jane had grown up with. Perhaps another servant, but a superior servant, of course. Or a shopkeeper who owned one of the smart little shops in Jesmond, or a clerk from Mr Coulson’s office. She hoped that, eventually, Jane would see the advantages of such a marriage – if only her daughter could forget her old fascination with William Lawson, good lad though he was.  
    ‘Here,’ her mother said, ‘aren’t you going to put your hat on?’  
    Jane stood before the mirror in the hallstand as she tucked in a stray wisp of hair. ‘No, I don’t think so. It’s a little . . . a little frivolous, don’t you think?’  
    She turned to smile anxiously at her mother. Florence Harrison held the small straw hat in her work-roughened hands and gazed wonderingly at the sprays of tiny artificial blue and white flowers and the matching satin ribbons. ‘Yes, pet, I know what you mean.’  
    Jane turned back to the mirror and adjusted the hyacinth blue satin bow at the neck of her white blouse. The ribbon was the same shade as her skirt and the buttonless jacket, which was cut away to reveal the self-coloured rows of piping on the blouse.  
    ‘Gan on, you’ll do.’ Her mother smiled as she fell into the local way of talking. She didn’t do it often as she had always striven to speak a little less broadly than her neighbours. Not because she was a snob – she never thought of herself as superior to the hardworking women of the village – but because she had wanted a better way of life for Jane and she’d believed it was no use paying good money for elocution lessons if she wasn’t going to try to set some sort of example herself.  
    ‘Right . . . I’ll go now. See if there’s anything I can do to help.’  
    Everything looked so normal, Jane thought as she made her way to the Lawsons’ cottage. It was still early and the men hadn’t returned from the fishing, although it wouldn’t be much longer now. Children played in the