Yes, Mama

by Helen Forrester

  As Macdonald led the horse into the barn to join the goat bleating in a corner, Billy stood staring at the stones; a skiff of snow was already powdering them over. Rage took over from pain.

  ‘I’ll kill him,’ he promised himself savagely. ‘One day I’ll kill him. And then I’ll run away. I’ll die in the forest before I stay here.’ He slowly lifted the home-made ladder and set it against the barn wall; the stones were heavy and awkward to carry up a ladder which rapidly became slippery and every journey hurt his battered back.

  It was Mrs Macdonald who came through the early darkness, a lantern in her hand, to tell him to come in. He had not put many stones in place but in the dark his poor efforts went unremarked.

  ‘Come on,’ was all she said.

  They passed a silent Macdonald going to the bam to check the horse and put a blanket over it before he went to bed.

  In the candlelit cabin, Mrs Macdonald told him to wash his face, while she put some stew out for him. Afterwards, he went to the fire and stood warming his frozen hands and feet. ‘Get to bed before he comes back,’ she urged, so he took his plate and spoon into his bunk with him. He was beyond talking, but his hunger was such that he managed to eat his supper despite his hurt lip.

  ‘Holy Mother, hear my prayer,’ he whispered to himself, rage gone from him leaving him cowed and exhausted. ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, send the lady from Toronto – send her soon.’

  III

  November and December slipped away in unremitted work. He fed the animals, cleaned tools, went for water, shovelled snow away from the door and kept a path open to the frozen privy, cut kindling and did the washing. He also helped Mrs Macdonald make a pair of knee-high mocassins for each of them out of roughly tanned skins. As the sun curved through the sky closer and closer to the horizon, he waited and hoped.

  In their despair, the Macdonalds did not keep Christmas, and Billy spent Christmas Day chipping steps into the ice in order to reach water in the river. Macdonald taught him how to snare small animals, skin them, scrape their skins clean and prepare them for eating. Together, they walked through the bush to a small lake, frozen like everything else. There they built a rough shelter with spruce boughs, bored a hole through the ice and Billy learned to fish. If Macdonald had been a more kindly man, Billy would have enjoyed learning these new skills, but his employer was, at best, irascible, at worst a bully to be feared.

  In January, the cold became a dreadful nightmare and carrying water from the river, in clothing suitable for an English winter, became a battle which Billy began to feel he would lose. He begged another pair of socks and an old woollen shawl from Mrs Macdonald. The shawl he wrapped round his head and neck over his cap, to save his ears and cheeks from frostbite.

  One night, the cabin became lined with ice and the baby froze to death. For once, Billy was sorry for Mrs Macdonald. She did not cry, but sat silently by the fire, her hands in her aproned lap, her domestic tasks undone. Macdonald tried to rouse her, without success. It was Billy who took whatever game he and Macdonald had been able to find and made stews out of it and tried to persuade the woman to eat. It was Macdonald himself who had to take the tiny bundle which had been his son outside and cover it with some of the stones from his field so that it could not be eaten by predators, until Spring should come and he could bury it. Both of them began to fear that Mrs Macdonald had lost her reason.

  In the latter part of the winter, when rabbits became hard to find, they lived on oatmeal and on the odd fish, caught on days when the weather eased a little. Macdonald tried to cheer up his wife by saying that with the first money they got from next year’s crop he would buy a rifle, so that he could hunt moose to fill their winter larder. To Billy, he worried that the horse and goat might not survive; it was a simpler matter to replace a baby than it was to replace a draught animal.

  Billy crept on from day to day, numbed by the gruelling cold and, alternatively, the confinement to the tiny cabin.

  One March day, when it seemed that the weather was indeed a little warmer, despite its being overcast, they took the horse out and felled another tree. By the time it had been dragged home, however, snow was beginning to fall and Macdonald said uneasily that he thought they were in for a storm. They stabled the horse and put its blankets over it and fed it. Macdonald had built an inner enclosure for the goat and laid spruce branches thickly on the floor of it and the animal was surviving, though it had chewed all the bark off the logs forming its pen.

  The snow came down heavily and a wind whipped it into deep drifts, so that Billy was glad that Macdonald had earlier connected the cabin entrance to the privy by a rope; he knew that as long as he held on to the rope, he could find his way back to the cabin after relieving himself, no matter how thickly it was snowing.

  It was this rope which led a trapper, caught in the white wilderness of the storm, from the edge of the clearing to their door. In his thankfulness at finding a warm refuge, he did not know that Billy was convinced that he had been sent by the Holy Mother herself.

  IV

  To Polly and Alicia in crowded England, it seemed impossible that Billy could have been in a place so isolated that it did not even have a proper name, only numbers from a survey map, a place where there were no shops or even another person, except his employers, until in a storm, a half-French, half-Red Indian man had sought shelter with them. Yet, there it was, all set out vividly in stumbling print over both sides of three pages torn from an account book.

  Polly looked at the letter dumbfounded and then handed it to Alicia. ‘It shouldn’t happen to a dog!’ she exclaimed. ‘He were lucky that man told him the route down to the railway line; a simple way, even if it were longer – so he didn’t get lost. Eight hours’ walkin’. It’s terrible!’

  Alicia, too, was horrified by Billy’s story. ‘Poor boy! Thank goodness, he had enough sense to wait until the Spring came before he set out.’

  ‘Aye.’ Polly heaved a sigh. ‘He never should’ve gone to Canada. I knew something awful would happen.’

  ‘Well, it sounds as if he’s all right now,’ Alicia comforted her. The old pedlar who picked him up near the Metis village seems a decent sort. I’m sure he’ll find it much easier helping him to sell buttons and cotton and things than working on a farm.’

  Polly agreed, and then asked, ‘But where’s Winnipeg? That’s where I got to write back.’

  ‘It’s in Manitoba on the Red River. I’ll get the atlas and show you.’

  Polly and Alicia had been tidying the linen closet opposite her mother’s bedroom when the postman had brought the afternoon mail. Now she ran up the stairs from the second floor landing to the nursery and, more slowly, brought down her school atlas. While she looked for the page containing Canada, Polly said, ‘He says that next Spring, they’ll leave Winnipeg and go west.’

  ‘Hm.’ Alicia found Winnipeg and, leaning the atlas against the wall, so that Polly could see better where she was pointing, she said slowly, ‘You know, Pol, there’s an awful lot of Canada west of Winnipeg. I wonder where his pedlar’s taking him?’

  ‘Maybe when Master Edward comes home on leave – he’s due soon – we could ask him if he knows the likely places.’

  Alicia smiled. ‘Of course we could.’

  ‘I’d like to write back to Billy tonight. Would you help me, Allie? I’m not that good at writin’ letters.’

  ‘I’d love to.’

  After dinner, Alicia sat for a short while with her mother and told her about Billy’s adventures. Elizabeth did not appear very interested and Alicia was finally reduced to silence. Then her mother said, ‘I want to talk to you about school.’

  Sarah Webb had willingly agreed to share the cost of sending Alicia to Blackburne House School, so Elizabeth spent a few minutes explaining the advantages of the new school to Alicia. ‘You will start in September,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, Mama.’ She knew that the school was considered a good one, but she felt nervous about leaving Miss Schreiber and the girls
with whom she was familiar. September was, however, a long way off, and in the meantime she had promised to help Polly with her letter, so she said no more and sat waiting for her mother to say she could go.

  A little nonplussed at the absence of enthusiasm from Alicia at being sent to such an excellent school, Elizabeth dismissed her.

  To help Polly, Alicia took her mother’s tea tray down to the kitchen. Rosie, who had married her milkman at Christmastime, had not been replaced and Fanny and Polly were having to carry her work between them. They grumbled a great deal about the extra load and, recently, in bed at night, Alicia had felt sick with dread that they might hand in their notice and leave her faced with strange, new servants to take care of her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I

  In November 1899, Alicia lost an old friend.

  After getting wet through on her day off, Mrs Tibbs caught pneumonia; she took to her bed with a temperature and a hacking cough, and Fanny and Polly grumbled at the extra work they had to undertake. It was assumed, however, that she would be up again in a couple of days.

  Elizabeth endured several days of complaint from Humphrey about Polly’s cooking before she descended to her cook-housekeeper’s basement bedroom to inquire when she expected to be better.

  Mrs Tibbs was obviously in pain and she did not recognize her mistress.

  A frightened Elizabeth sent for the doctor, who on seeing the patient had her immediately transferred to the Infirmary. There, overnight, she died.

  Elizabeth told Humphrey that she would try to find a good, new cook.

  He glanced up from his desk in the library and replied, ‘Teach Polly how to cook – we can’t afford a full-time cook, anyway,’ a remark which was far from true.

  Elizabeth protested. Out of pure malice, Humphrey refused to budge. ‘It wouldn’t hurt you to do some of the cooking yourself,’ he bellowed at her. ‘Get off your fat bottom and do something, for a change.’

  Shocked that he should mention any part of her anatomy, Elizabeth flounced out of the room.

  In the hall, she bumped into Alicia on her way back to school after lunch. Her face flushed with rage, she paused and said angrily, ‘I really don’t know why Mrs Tibbs had to die so inconveniently. Polly will have to learn to cook from her cookery books!’

  ‘Why, Mama?’ Alicia had moved towards the front door and had her hand on the big, iron key, ready to turn it.

  ‘Mr Woodman won’t let me replace Mrs Tibbs.’

  ‘He didn’t let you get anyone instead of Rose when she got married.’

  Fuming, Elizabeth ignored her daughter’s remark, and said crossly, ‘Fanny and Polly will simply have to split the work between them. Perhaps I can get a charwoman from the Workhouse to help in the mornings.’

  ‘Yes, Mama.’ As she opened the front door, her heart beat faster with apprehension. ‘I hope Polly and Fanny don’t feel the work is too much – and leave us, Mama?’

  ‘I’ll raise their wages,’ promised Elizabeth, ‘no matter what Mr Woodman says. I can’t do it from my own money – with Charles to help – and then there are the Blackburne House fees …,’ she trailed off. Then she said impatiently to Alicia, ‘Run along now – you’ll be late.’

  ‘Yes, Mama.’

  Her mother swept across the hall to the dining-room where Polly was brushing up the crumbs from the linen tablecloth with a tiny crumb-tray and brush.

  Alicia turned the key in the lock, swung open the heavy, oak front door and went slowly down the steps. She was deeply puzzled about Elizabeth’s remark regarding school fees. She had always imagined that fathers paid for their children’s education – and she knew from an overheard complaint of Humphrey’s that he paid Charles’s university fees – and, yet, if she had understood correctly, her mother was paying for her to attend Blackburne House. It seemed very strange and again suggested to her that there was something that made her different from other daughters.

  II

  Both Polly and Fanny were, at first, very resentful of the imposition of yet more work. Polly ventured to protest to Elizabeth that they already ran the house with two less staff than when she had first come to serve her. ‘There’s Maisie and Rosie gone,’ she pointed out aggrievedly.

  At the threatened loss of his remaining domestics, Humphrey grumpily gave in, and Elizabeth raised Polly’s wages by thirty shillings a year and Fanny’s by a pound – it was still much cheaper than replacing Mrs Tibbs. The two servants promised to think her offer over, and retired to the kitchen to boil up an extremely strong pot of tea and drink it with double helpings of sugar, while they angrily discussed their position.

  Alicia came home from school while they were still talking. She ran to Polly and flung her arms round her. ‘Guess what, Polly? I got full marks for my essay on Canada. Isn’t it great? I’m sure it’s because of writing to Billy and finding the places he goes to, on the map.’ She turned excitedly to Fanny, ‘I didn’t even have a spelling error – first time it’s happened.’

  Fanny looked at Polly and began to laugh. Alicia looked at the two maids. She dropped her arms, and said crossly, ‘Well, I don’t think it’s anything to laugh at.’

  They hastened to comfort her and assure her that they were not laughing at her, but at themselves; they were both delighted at her success.

  ‘I couldn’t leave’er, not if I tried,’ Polly said to Fanny, when Alicia insisted on carrying her mother’s tea tray up to her, to save Polly’s legs.

  ‘I knowed it – that’s wot made me laugh,’ replied Fanny, with one of her wide grins. ‘And I don’t know no other place. We’ll manage somehow, we will.’

  Polly made a list of the work to be done and submitted it to Elizabeth for approval. Elizabeth reluctantly agreed to it. It entailed doing house-cleaning at times other than the weekday mornings, ‘’Cos Fanny’ll never get through it, now she’s got to wait at table while I cook – and most times she’ll have to answer the bell,’ Polly said.

  It particularly irritated Elizabeth that the morning-room, which she regarded as her own private sitting-room, was not cleaned before she rose in the morning. Sometimes, the work was done on a Saturday morning, and Alicia never forgot the problem of routing her mother out, once she was settled in her chair.

  She would put her arms under her mother’s armpits and say, ‘Let me help you up, Mama.’ Then she would heave her forward from the depths of the chair. It seemed as if, every month, her mother grew heavier, and that she did not smell quite as nicely as she used to. Her favourite, grey morning dress always seemed to be a little spotted with tea and in need of sponging and pressing. Her magnificent hair was bundled carelessly into a snood at the back of her neck. As Alicia eased her carefully up the stairs to the big formal drawing-room to sit and have her coffee while the morning-room was cleaned, she would complain steadily, and Alicia would do her utmost to quell her own girlish impatience and respond noncommittally by simply saying, ‘Yes, Mama. I do understand how difficult it is for you.’

  III

  One by one, Elizabeth had given up her charitable endeavours; they had always been tedious to her and she found them increasingly tiring. Because they failed to attract the type of woman she would have liked to mix with, she ceased, also, to hold her weekly At Homes.

  Added to the innuendo that followed Alicia’s birth, ladies said behind their fans that she flirted too much at the dinners and dances which her husband insisted she attend with him. Her dresses were just a little too loud, her wit a little too sharp, and Elizabeth knew she was asked because she was Humphrey’s wife, not from friendship towards her.

  The ultimate humiliation had occurred at a private New Year Reception. She had heard a budding young medical specialist from the School of Tropical Medicine make a vulgar joke at her expense, and it had punctured her self-respect beyond repair – because it was so close to the truth. Afterwards, she began to lose her hold on life and to give way to her inward despair.

  When she heard that Andrew Crossing’s w
ife had died, she had enjoyed a few months of wild hope that he would seek her out, demand that she should divorce Humphrey and marry him. But after six months, he married his secretary.

  Moving towards womanhood with all the dreams of a young girl, Alicia found it more and more difficult to endure her mother’s moods; yet Polly assured her that it was her duty to do so. ‘She’s your Mam,’ she reminded the girl sharply. ‘You be patient with her; daughters have to bear with their Mams.’

  On the rare occasions when Alicia went to church, the preachers would point up the need for young people to honour their parents. She also knew of older single women in the district who cared for ageing parents. She decided that Polly must be right. It irritated her, however, when Florence on one of her brief visits would take it for granted that it was Alicia, and not herself, who was going to do the honouring. ‘Does marriage let you off?’ Alicia wondered crossly.

  IV

  If it had not been for Polly and Fanny, Alicia would never have seen anything of the excitement of the special New Year which ushered the world into the twentieth century.

  While her parents drove in a hired carriage to the home of one of Humphrey’s friends for a New Year dinner, Alicia had eaten her own dinner at the kitchen table, rather than have Polly bring a tray up to the loneliness of the day nursery.

  On her way down to the basement, she had been unnerved by the sound of quarrelling coming from her parents’ bedroom. She knew that Humphrey sometimes hit her mother and the idea of anyone being struck sickened her, though Polly had often slapped her when she had done something wrong.