December Girl

by Nicola Cassidy

  When I brush my hair every evening and the black flits fall out, that’s what I think of. I don’t think of the men that have run their fingers through it, or held on to it as they’ve held on to me, pushing with all their might as if they want to break me. I think of the flights I had today, of all I’ve seen, in the air, in my mind.

  Mr Tubular has taken a shine to me. It might be my accent or because I’m quiet. He tells me he could look into my eyes all day. He’s not the worst, but he’s coming to see me regularly now. Madame Camille is pleased; she says he’s hooked.

  He gets off me after he’s finished and he starts dressing, standing on one foot, hopping up and down into his trousers. I sit up and attend to myself, over to the bowl for washing, the cloth for wiping, the powder to make me fresh again and ready for whoever’s next. He starts asking questions, being all personal, wanting to get to know me.

  ‘What part of Ireland did you say you’re from?’ he says.

  ‘Dowth,’ I say. ‘It’s in County Meath. North of Dublin.’

  ‘Doubt?’ he says.

  ‘Dowth,’ I say again, emphasising the end part of the word.

  ‘Oh,’ he says and laughs.

  Why had I told Mr Tubular? Why had I broken my rule of never telling people where I was from?

  ‘Not been to Ireland,’ he says. ‘Maybe someday I’ll go.’

  I turn my back away from him, pulling on the scratchy chemise Madame Camille gave me. It has holes at the front, near the crotch. If I ask, she might give me a new one, but what do I care if there’s holes? There’s no looking respectable here anyways.

  I wasn’t in the mood for small talk with Mr Tubular. He was done, and he’d paid. I stood facing the corner, looking at the peeling paper above my head. Mottled damp crept from the ceiling down the wall. The room smelled of sweat and semen. I folded my arms and waited.

  He asked me another question but I didn’t respond. Instead I sighed, to let him know our time was up and he was to leave.

  ‘I’d like to see you again,’ he says.

  ‘I’m always here,’ I say, my voice as flat as I could make it.

  ‘You’re too good for this place,’ he says and I remain motionless.

  I watch a solitary drop of water travel from the ceiling joint, along the sharp edge of the folded falling paper. It moves along the edge and then plops on to the floor, splattering on to the lino below.

  I hear the door close and when I look around, Mr Tubular is gone.

  * * *

  It was as though the notice had been sent by God himself, a small, yellow card, Help Wanted, Apply Within. I’d walked the streets, in and out of little shops, speaking to the keepers, watching them shake their heads. One felt sorry for me and gave me a hard end of bread. I was still limping a bit, finding it difficult to walk.

  I climbed the grey steps of the house and pulled back the heavy iron knocker. A housekeeper answered, small, wispy bits of hair poking out of her cap.

  ‘Yes?’ she said and she didn’t look too pleased to see me.

  ‘You’re looking for help?’ I said, pointing to the card displayed in the window.

  ‘The service entrance,’ she said, spitting the words at me. She slammed the heavy door closed. I peered over the edge of the steps and could see a basement below. Slowly I climbed back down the steps and through the small gate to allow me down to the service entrance. That was stupid of me I suppose, knocking on the front door.

  I rapped on the service door, looking at the flakes of paint that had chipped off around the glass. It was a few minutes before the same housekeeper appeared again, a scowl still on her face.

  ‘Have you references?’ she said. And I shook my head.

  ‘Can’t help you, then,’ she said and she went to close the door. I stuck my foot in it and stopped it with my hand.

  ‘Please,’ I said. ‘If I could just talk to you. If I told you about myself. You might …’

  My voice trailed off. I sounded desperate.

  ‘Where are you from?’ she said, looking me up and down now.

  ‘Ireland,’ I said.

  ‘What part?’ I picked up on her Irish lilt.

  I told her I was just off the boat, that I’d come by train from Liverpool, that I was on my own and that I was a hard worker. She stood back and the space behind the door revealed a large kitchen, a puff of hot air hitting my frame on the doorstep.

  Two girls stood in the kitchen chopping vegetables. They looked up when I came in, no expression on their faces, white caps on their heads. The housekeeper led me past them and into a small pantry at the back.

  ‘We don’t usually take anyone on without references,’ she says.

  ‘I’m a good worker,’ I say. ‘I was reared on a farm. I can cook and sew. I’ll do anything you want.’

  It felt as though my insides had been turned inside-out - the pain travelled up to my stomach. I put my hand below my belly button, soothing myself.

  ‘You can have a trial,’ she said. ‘You’ll be starting at the bottom, but if you’re good you can work your way up.’

  She told me to come back that evening and I could start in the morning. When I did come back, I sat with all the staff and we had our tea and the relief washed over me that I wouldn’t have to spend another night in the hostel, sleeping with my hand on my bag, hoping the pain between my legs would finally ebb away.

  Everyone went to bed early ready for another day of work and it felt so good to know that I was safe for the night, that I had managed to secure myself a place with bread and board and a purse full of shillings to be paid into my hand at the end of the month.

  I was put in a room with Martha, a girl from Scotland with red hair and she lent me her hairbrush that night and told me she didn’t mind at all. I listened to her gentle snores filling our attic room and when I was sure she was asleep, that her breathing was that of someone dreaming, I let the tears come out. Crying because I was settled, crying for the pain in my stomach and between my legs and crying for all that I had lost.

  He’d taken everything from me, had Mr McKenna.

  * * *

  I was still bleeding and every time I got up from my hunkers, after sweeping out the fire place, I felt as though I might pass out with the rush to my head.

  Mrs Harrington, the housekeeper, told me I looked pale and for a minute I wanted to tell her what happened to me. But I didn’t have the words - how could I tell anyone that? That I was dirty? Destroyed? She told me to take a spoon of tonic after tea and I did, feeling its oil trickle down my throat, tasting of blood. I took a gulp of cold tea to get rid of it.

  Mrs Harrington was right when she said the work was hard, but after the first week, when I was getting my bearings and finding my way round the house, I eased into it and did everything she told me and everything I could to please her. I wanted to be kept. I wanted to get my wages at the end of the month and start saving for myself. I was on my own now and I was going to make my own way.

  Martha asked me one of the evenings if I’d like to take a walk with her. We left through the servant entrance, out on to the street, chattering about where we were from and how the house wasn’t too bad to work in at all. I didn’t tell her the truth, that I’d left behind a mother and brothers that I loved very much. I told her I didn’t have any family, that they’d died and that’s why I’d come to London, on my own.

  Her red hair glinted in the autumn sun and I thought how pretty she was, with skin the colour of milk and long lashes catching your eye every time she blinked.

  ‘Look at yer one over there,’ she said as we walked.

  I looked to where she’d nodded her head and saw a woman standing under a lamp post, her face painted in make-up, a frilly bonnet and blouse on her, coloured, mismatched, standing out.

  ‘You know what she is, don’t you?’

  I looked harder, at how she leaned against the post, a smirk on her face, as though she knew a secret none of us did.

  ‘No,’ I said. She looke
d a bit unusual, but I didn’t see anything too wrong with her.

  ‘She’s on the game,’ said Martha. ‘A whore.’

  ‘What?’ I said, whipping my head round to look at her again.

  I’d never seen a prostitute before.

  Martha laughed and told me I was very innocent and that I was in London now and this was city life.

  I did feel innocent, having only ever been to Dublin a handful of times, travelling there with Daddy to the horse fair or to meet a merchant. I’d heard about prostitutes, but I’d never seen a real one.

  ‘Dirty whore,’ Martha said and she wrinkled up her nose like she’d a bad taste in her mouth.

  As I looked, a gentleman walked past the woman and she tipped her bonnet at him as she curtsied. He stopped, smiled and began talking to her and she moved in closer, as though she knew him well, as though he were familiar to her.

  ‘You’d want to be desperate to end up like her,’ said Martha, as we walked on, past the evening strollers who were out on the streets like us, taking a break from their jobs as domestics in the large houses all along this street.

  * * *

  A few weeks after I arrived at the house, after I’d gotten to know Martha a bit, I started noticing a sickly feeling creeping into my stomach. It came after I ate, like a rash inside my tummy, and then it would disappear and come back at bedtime. One morning I got up and I spilled my stomach into the pot under the bed, just about making it.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ said Martha, who was pulling the pinny over her head. Her hair was sticking out in great, big, red bunches.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  The sickness came and went. I ignored it, because it usually went away. I thought it might be something to do with Mr McKenna and what had happened, an infection maybe. I started getting up earlier than Martha, so I could be sick in peace and not have her asking what was wrong, and annoying me. When the smells were strong in the kitchen, or when one of the footmen walked by, stinking of sweat having carried heavy cases up the stairs, I pulled my sleeve over my nose and closed my eyes and told my stomach to behave itself and make the sickness go away.

  And it did. After a few weeks, it wasn’t as bad anymore and one morning I woke up and it was gone completely. I was pleased and that evening had an extra helping of bread and butter at the table, feeling for the first time in weeks that I wanted to eat and be full.

  I leaned back in my chair at the kitchen table, listening to the banter back and forth. I liked living here with the mix of accents and the jokes and no one poking their noses into each other’s past.

  I put my hand on my stomach and rubbed it, feeling satisfied for the first time in a long time. Then I noticed it. A firmness. A hard ball where my soft tummy had been.

  I wondered if I could have an infection that made me swell, after what Mr McKenna had done to me, after all that sickness, something might have been causing it.

  A slow horror wiped itself across my mind. It had been weeks since my monthlies had come. I’d been in England three months now and not once had I bled.

  I patted my stomach again, feeling how hard my insides were.

  The sounds of the staff chatting faded in my ears, as hairs stood on the back of my neck.

  I leaned forward, the two front legs of the chair hitting the ground hard.

  It wasn’t an infection Mr McKenna had given me.

  It was a baby.

  Chapter Eleven

  HENRY

  The letter came on the very last day of summer. He had given up hope completely. He had gone from watching the postman every day, to some days, to not at all. He had gone through feelings of despair and desperation, to raised spirits, followed by frustration again. And all the while, his father got it into his head that staying on the estate was the best thing for him to do.

  Arthur had no opinion on the matter. He was looking forward to his own college life starting and he made the most of his summer. There were evening gatherings and lake fishing trips, long days at the summer races and shopping excursions to Dublin. Arthur was amassing a fine array of suits, hats and cravats, while Henry was happy to live in his wide breeches and open necked shirt.

  Henry took to walking the land, marching through the woods and pushing his thoughts round and round in his mind. This had been one of the most frustrating years he could remember; university was finishing, his romantic future looked dim to say the least and London seemed to be off the cards now. And all the while he had the problems of the estate being pushed on to his plate by his father.

  Montgomery’s murder had shaken Seymour badly. He had tightened security on the estate, barricading the gates to the house and employing extra footmen to guard the house at night. He began to speak of the famine times, when landlords were found murdered on the roads.

  ‘I never thought I would see a day like this,’ he said, after Montgomery’s funeral, his face drained of colour, dark dashes under his eyes.

  Henry understood his father’s fears but did not feel the same himself. He refused to bring a chaperon with him and shook off his father’s demands to stop walking in the woods by himself.

  ‘You’ll turn up swinging from a tree,’ said Seymour.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Henry. ‘I’ve been thinking about it.’

  He was prodding his father to pick up on his melancholy, half joking in frustration at the way the year was panning out. He’d never truly considered taking his life, but on some of the days, on some of the bleakest, he wondered what it would be like to throw a rope across one of the trees in Townley Hall woods.

  Henry had come to understand, as he’d gotten older, that their mother had most likely ended her own life. It was not something that was ever discussed and the tentative questions he did put to Mrs Johansson and more rarely, to his father, were always shrugged off.

  He remembered her funeral, which was small and late in the evening and he realised that the whole event had carried a shame about it, whispers, white faces, silence. He thought of the final glimpse he had of his mother, a quick flash as the door of her bedroom was opened and closed as he passed. She was laid out as if she were sleeping, but the sound of sobbing came from her room. He knew it was their father.

  He had not been allowed in to see her. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d seen her properly. She hadn’t said goodbye. She had been there and then she was gone. And it wasn’t a subject Seymour wished to ever discuss.

  A detective was put on Montgomery’s case and five local men were arrested. All five had either been at the regatta or the pub in the village that evening and with too many alibis, they were let go, one by one.

  The murder was a mystery.

  Amelia Aherne had shown up at one of the summer parties at Brabazon. Henry had smiled, kissed her cheek, and tried to avoid contact for the remainder of the evening. But, just as he’d forgotten she was there, when he was engrossed in a conversation about the harvest or tenant tensions or Montgomery’s murder, she’d appear in his line of sight again, slighting his mood, sending an ache right through his chest. How had she slipped through his fingers?

  In the previous semesters at Oxford, Henry had spent most of his evenings penning letters to Amelia. Some he had taken, scrunched in his hand and tossed in the waste paper basket, embarrassed that he had ever put such emotion to paper. But this semester, her letters back had been rare. It was as though she had stopped wanting to write. He still sent his own letters, even if he had not received a reply. He knew that each one he wrote was growing increasingly desperate.

  In the final days of college, in the week where he was sitting back to back exams, staying up late into night, crushing black coffee beans and forcing the hot brew he made down his throat, a manilla coloured envelope arrived. It was addressed to him in Amelia’s writing, her long loops on the letters, the tiny mark she made on the ‘z’ in his name. He cut it open with a knife, pawing at the letter, his heart racing now that he had finally heard from her. What joy that she had
written, particularly in this week, when he needed something good to think about outside of study.

  His eyes raced over the words, scanning, getting to the bottom of the page, the message not going in. He reread the letter, but still did not understand it. When he read it a third time, he let the letter fall, right on to his plate, the remains of the ketchup on his kippers soaking into the paper. The letter absorbed the sauce in little pink spots, covering the words she had written in a dark brown ink.

  ‘I know this may surprise you and I hope that we can remain friends. I wish you the very best in your study, and with your future. You will make a fine man of law, I have no doubt. Sincerely and with kindest of thoughts, always, Amelia.’

  She was to be married. To an earl in Carlow. Henry stood, pushing the chair back with force, a lump building inside his throat. He should have asked her to marry him at Christmas, it had been on his mind to, but his father’s chatter about Charity Eustace had put him off the whole thing.

  He had walked over to the wall, stared at the wood panel and considered punching it to feel the pain shoot through his wrist. But if he broke his hand, he could not write and he would not pass the exams he needed to pass to make a new life for himself. Instead, he walked over to the bed, picked up his pinstripe pillow and pushed his face into it, feeling his teeth grip and grind against the heady stuffing. He roared, as loud as he could, screaming from his stomach and lungs, putting all his frustration into the soft fibres against his nose.

  And then he returned to the table, pushed the plate with the dirtied letter aside and started reading the book with the dense text again. He had lost Amelia, but he swore it would be the last time he would lose anything again.

  Now that she had appeared back at Brabazon for the summer party, he wondered if there was still time to rekindle their friendship, to bring things back to where they had been. He considered writing her another letter, from the heart. In it he would tell her how ridiculous he had been, that he should have, could have, proposed last year and if she’d only find it in herself to forgive him, cease her current engagement and form a new engagement with him, they could live happily together, he was sure of it. He could slip the letter into her hand, pass it to her when no one was looking.