Elizabeth had failed to get up on the last day of the century. Humphrey had insisted that they must attend the dinner to which they had been invited. Finally, he had rung the bell furiously, and Polly had shot upstairs to answer it.
‘Help your mistress get washed and dressed,’ Humphrey had ordered her. His face purple, his white moustache quivering with rage, he had gone back into the dressing-room to change into his dinner clothes. ‘The carriage will be here in an hour,’ he had shouted to the women, as he slammed the door after himself.
Elizabeth was not ill. She simply did not want to make the effort, yet again, to be civil to women who obviously did not really want to know her. Since Polly was there, politely waiting, she did reluctantly rise from her bed, and within the hour Polly managed to have her washed, dressed and her hair well brushed and neatly braided round her head, though the style was most unfashionable. As she handed her mistress her long, white satin gloves and an ivory brisé fan, she felt some pity for her. ‘You look very fine, Ma’am, in that plum colour,’ she whispered encouragingly.
‘Thank you, Polly. I had better put on my heavy cloak, though it doesn’t match this gown.’
Polly got out the black velvet cloak and wrapped it round Elizabeth. Then she helped her down the stairs.
Humphrey was already waiting in the hall, his cloak over his shoulders. He carried a top hat and was impatiently drumming his fingers on its hard top. ‘Hurry,’ he called to his wife. ‘We mustn’t keep the horse waiting.’
He’d keep me waiting for hours, Elizabeth thought savagely, whenever he felt like it, but not a horse – not a horse.
The minute the front door had been shut after the Master and Mistress, the atmosphere of the house changed. Alicia had gone to wash her hands after her meal, and when she returned to the kitchen, she found the two maids sitting before the fire with their feet on the steel fender, a fender which badly needed polishing. On the floor between them was a jug of porter. They each held a mug in their hands.
‘Coom on, luv,’ invited Fanny, shifting her kitchen chair to make room for the girl. ‘It’s a proper shame they never thought of you havin’ a bit of fun tonight.’
Alicia was so used to having to fill her evenings and holidays herself that this point had not occurred to her. Left to herself, she would have done her piano practice and then read until bedtime.
‘Pull up a chair, duck,’ Polly encouraged her, her plump face and blue eyes gentle to this child who was almost a woman.
As Alicia turned to get herself a chair, Fanny said, ‘Polly and I was thinkin’ we’d go up to the crossroads – you know, at Smithdown Road and Lodge Lane – afore midnight. Do you want to come?’
Alicia smiled. ‘Why would you want to go up there?’
‘Don’t you know? Thousands a people goes every New Year. We have a great time. Everybody joins hands and the circle goes in and out of all the streets that meet there. And we sing and we have a good laugh. Then the men go first-footing, ’specially the dark ones ’cos they bring good luck.’
‘What’s first-footing?’ Alicia asked, as she plunked herself down on the edge of her chair.
Fanny looked at her in amazement. ‘Hasn’t Polly never told you about it? You have bin missin’ out. That’s where they goes knockin’ on all the doors, to come into the house – to be the first visitor, like. They has a bit o’ bread in one hand and a bit o’ coal in the other. And they get a drink for it.’
‘It brings good luck to the house,’ Polly interjected. She took a sip of porter and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
‘Does anybody first-foot our house?’
‘Well, when you was a little girl, when your Mam used to give a party, the Reverend, Miss Florence’s husband, used to come, ’cos he’s as dark as can be.’ Polly took another sip, and sighed. ‘But not no more. Do you remember, luv, at all?’
‘Not really. They were grown-ups’ parties. I used to hear them, sometimes, when I was lying in bed.’ She paused, and reverted to Fanny’s suggestion that they should go up to the crossroads. ‘I don’t think Mama would like me to go out in the dark.’
‘Och, you’d be safe enough with the two of us, wouldn’t she, Pol?’
‘For sure you would. And if you don’t tell your Mam, she won’t know nothin’.’
Alicia did not reply. She felt that she could not forbid the maids to go; she guessed that, for years, those girls not likely to be missed by her mother had gone cheerfully off to this gathering. Tucked up in the attic nursery bedroom, she could often have been left alone in the house, if her parents were out, and she would not have realized it.
Now she was nearly grown up, Polly did not fuss so much about bedtime; and here she was, sitting with her two best friends, and, outside, the magic of this special New Year beckoned. What would the twentieth century be like, she wondered, lurking out there in the darkness, a mysterious unknown. And passionately she wished that it would be fun, that she might have a bicycle and go spinning out to the countryside on it – or even learn to play tennis, like Charles.
She looked up and smiled at Polly. ‘What should I put on?’ she asked.
‘Wrap up warm,’ Polly told her, as she got up from her chair and took her empty beer mug to the sink. ‘And put your grey shawl up round your head and shoulders – then you’ll look like everyone else up there and nobody’ll know you.’ She was suddenly uneasy that someone might recognize the girl; but then not many people knew her that well, she reassured herself.
They set out about half-past eleven, skipping along together. They passed out of the quiet streets and squares which formed their own salubrious neighbourhood, into a district of older small houses and shops. They soon joined a stream of humanity, the majority young working men. The whole concourse was extremely merry, and, with two mugs of porter inside each of them, both Polly and Fanny were very talkative. The excitement of the crowd was infectious and Alicia tripped along gaily between the two maids.
They joined a huge ring of people holding hands. Alicia’s shawl fell back from her white-gold hair and her plait swung behind her, as she laughed up at Fanny.
A burly man in blackened labourer’s clothing pushed between the young girl and Fanny. ‘Allo, la, Fan. The ole girl let you out tonight, aye?’ He grasped Alicia’s hand, without looking at her, so as to keep the continuity of the ring.
Fanny laughed at him, and shouted back, ‘I coom, anyways.’
‘Must’ve known I’d be here.’
‘Don’t flatter yourself.’
Alicia clung on to Polly, on the other side of her. The crowd lifted their clasped hands and danced forward, converging on the point where all the streets met. Then they retreated backwards down each individual street as far as they could, without loosing hands, until, in the narrowness of the roadway they were face to face with part of the human chain on the other side of the street. Alicia found herself almost nose to nose with three well-dressed young men about seventeen years of age. They were all staggering and were largely held on their uncertain feet by the force of the people on either side of them.
‘Alicia Woodman!’ hiccuped one of them, as he recognized the daughter of a neighbour much talked-about by his parents. Loose-mouthed, he grinned at her before he was nearly thrown off his feet by the movement of the crowd as it reversed. He was hauled up by his friends and a moment later they staggered forward again towards a frightened Alicia.
One of the other youngsters shouted, ‘Who is she?’ and the original speaker replied, ‘She’s a neighbour. The Woodmans’ kid.’
‘What’s she doing here? A lady?’
They were so close to her now that Alicia could smell the alcohol on their breath, and she was sickened.
They stared at her with an unpleasant intentness. She gave no hint that she knew who they were and dropped her eyes behind her gold-rimmed glasses.
As the dancers parted again, there came one of those tiny silences that occasionally occur in the biggest crowds, and she clearly
heard the first speaker snigger and say, ‘Like mother, like daughter; they say she’s a bastard.’
The words were filled with scorn and Alicia’s heart leaped with apprehension. A bastard? What did that mean? Clearly something not very nice. She glanced up at Polly; she urgently wanted to go home to the safety of the nursery. But Polly was singing at the top of her voice, as they swayed back down a narrow street with the rest of the dancers; she did not look down at her charge.
Bent on flight, Alicia became aware of the huge hand clasping her on the other side. She knew the face of the man, though it was not as black as usual; it was the coalman. When she looked up at him, he grinned down at her in a friendly way, and she felt a little comforted. But what was a bastard?
‘Enjoyin’ yerself, me duck?’ he asked.
‘Oh, yes,’ she replied politely.
As if ordered, the crowd stopped moving and stood very quietly.
Through the cold, mist-laden air, hooters blared from the ships in the river and then church bells began to ring.
There was a great united shout. ‘Happy New Year! Happy New Century!’ It was followed immediately by hundreds and hundreds of voices singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’.
At the end of the song, arms were raised in a kind of last farewell to the old year, and the ring broke up. The coalman caught Fanny round the waist and gave her a smacking kiss. Still holding her, he turned to Alicia. ‘A happy New Year to yez, Miss,’ he said.
Struggling to stay near to the couple in the surging crowd, she replied, ‘Thank you, and a very happy one to you, too.’ Then she jumped in fright, as from behind her two arms encircled her waist. She half turned in the unexpected embrace and one of the hands was shifted to fondle her small young breasts beneath her shawl. ‘Happy New Year,’ her youthful neighbour breathed.
Alicia was aware of Fanny’s shocked face half behind the coalman. The coalman took one look at the youth, and said to Alicia, ‘You’d better go home, luv.’ Then to the boy he growled, ‘You, mister, you leave go of her.’
Alicia panicked and began to struggle. ‘Let go,’ she whispered.
The grip tightened and the fondling began to make her feel very odd indeed.
A large dirty fist was interposed between the back of her neck and the nuzzling nose of the youth. ‘See this,’ roared the coalman. ‘You bugger off or I’ll smash your bleedin’ face in.’
For a second, the hold on her loosened and Alicia broke free. She ran into Fanny’s arms. She was trembling all over and cried, ‘Take me home, Fanny. Where’s Polly?’
‘In a minute, luv. We’ll have to let the crowd go a bit.’ She eased the girl and herself behind the comforting bulk of the coalman.
The young man had raised his fists and squared off, ready to fight. His friends, seizing the opportunity of a small break in the press around them, tried to haul him backwards. This unsteadied him and he sat down suddenly on the cobbled street, to the amusement of a circle which had begun to form around the adversaries.
Alerted to trouble, Polly struggled back to Fanny and Alicia. She heard the stream of abuse hurled at the coalman by the fallen youngster and instead of stepping over his straddled legs, she deliberately trod on his ankle, as she passed. The abuse ceased in a shriek of pain.
A couple of women wrapped in black shawls nodded approval, and one cackled at the youth, ‘Serves yer right, yer cheeky bastard.’
Alicia, held tightly by Fanny, heard her and decided that if it were a term of abuse, a bastard must be a dreadful thing. Her trembling was renewed.
‘Get outta here, quick,’ the coalman ordered the maids and Alicia. Still facing the seated boy, who was now being tended by his anxious friends, he backed away a little. Then he hitched up his trousers, bent slightly and with a horrible grimace, he snarled, ‘Get back to your Mam afore I marmalize you.’ He turned and with deliberate slowness lounged after the scared maids.
The deflated little group was swept down Upper Parliament Street by the homeward-bound revellers, Polly muttering bracingly to Alicia, ‘Soon be home, luv. Time for bed.’
In the comparative quiet of Grove Street, they paused to say goodnight to the coalman. ‘You shouldn’t’ve took her,’ he scolded Polly and Fanny. ‘It’s not fit.’
Both women were very sober now and Polly was crestfallen as she answered him, ‘We wasn’t to know we’d bump into a little runt like that. He should’ve bin in bed – in his cradle.’
The quick walk had calmed Alicia, and now she said earnestly to the coalman, ‘It’s very kind of you to bring us home. I’m all right now, and I’m most grateful to you.’
The coalman looked down at the white, worried face glimmering in the gaslight from the street lamps. ‘Aye, it were nothin’, Miss.’ With the grey shawl over her head, she looked oddly like his little sister. He smiled, teeth flashing red and yellow against the coaldust ingrained in his skin. ‘You’ll be safe with our Fanny and Polly now.’ He turned away with a muttered, ‘Tara, well,’ to the maids and strode up the almost deserted street.
While they drank their bedtime cocoa, seated round the dying embers of the kitchen fire, Alicia did not contribute much to the conversation, except to say that the coalman was a very nice person. Within her lay a cold snake of fear. What was a bastard? Before she got into bed, she took down her school dictionary from the nursery shelf to look up the offending word. It was not in it.
V
Charles was spending his Christmas and New Year’s holidays with friends in London. Even if he had been at home, thought Alicia wistfully, he would have been out most of the time; she suspected that he avoided his family as much as possible because Papa shouted at him so much. Papa thought that university was wasted time. She sighed, as, on the last January day of her school holidays, she strolled alone through Princes Park under trees dripping with sea mist, the grass seared, the silence absolute. If Charles had been at home, she could have asked him, perhaps, what ‘bastard’ meant. ‘Could it be a slang word?’ she wondered. ‘Even if it were, what did it mean?’ She wished Edward would come home from the war; he knew so much.
After her walk, she took her mother’s four o’clock tea tray up to the morning-room.
‘Where’s Polly?’ asked her mother, looking up from the rose she was embroidering on a party dress for Florence’s eldest daughter.
Alicia explained that Polly was very busy preparing dinner.
Elizabeth nodded, and accepted a cup of tea from her daughter. Really, there was no reason why Alicia should not make herself useful in the house, she thought suddenly.
Alicia was often at a loss for conversational gambits when with Elizabeth. Today, however, she remembered that Elizabeth had been to a New Year Party, so she inquired if she had enjoyed it.
Elizabeth roused herself sufficiently to describe the menu and the guests. Alicia listened politely. She found sitting with her mother much more tedious than sitting with dear old Sarah Webb, her godmother, who was always delighted to discuss the news or ideas about education or religion or anything else that Alicia might be interested in.
She wondered if she dare ask Elizabeth what ‘bastard’ meant. She did not want to ask Polly, because if the word had a bad meaning, Polly would be sure to ask where she had heard it and she would have to own up that it had been thrown at her when they were out together; it might make Polly feel badly.
On consideration, she concluded that her mother might be the best person to ask. On another matter, Polly had said quite forcibly that it was a mother’s duty to explain things. A thoroughly scared Alicia had gone to Polly to say that she was bleeding – underneath. Had she caught consumption or something?
Polly had hugged her and told her calmly that all women bled every month and this simply meant that Alicia was now a young woman.
Alicia had gaped at her.
‘It’s true, duck. I’ll boil some rags and show you how to keep it off your petties. Don’t be frightened, now. It don’t mean nothin’ more. I’ll tell your Ma.’ She stroked t
he girl’s hair and kissed her. ‘If you get a pain, you tell me.’
Alicia did not get a pain. She learned, however, that mothers had at least one duty – to tell their children things – what things, she was not quite sure. She poured her mother another cup of tea, and asked, as she handed it to her, ‘Mama, what’s a bastard?’
Elizabeth blenched. At first she thought she must have misheard. Then, as she realized that Alicia had indeed asked such a diabolical question, she exclaimed in horror, ‘Alicia! Where did you hear such a dreadful word? It is most vulgar – never used by a lady under any circumstance.’ Her breath began to come in short gasps, as she tried to control her sense of panic.
‘I’m so sorry, Mama. I didn’t know that. I – I – er just thought it was another word I should learn how to spell. Are you all right, Mama?’
‘I feel faint. Get my smelling salts – they’re on the table here – somewhere.’ She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, unable to grapple with the inference of Alicia’s question.
Alicia jumped from the straight chair on which she had been sitting and scrabbled anxiously amid bits of satin and hanks of embroidery silk until she found the tiny blue glass bottle. She whipped off its top and her eyes blinked as the ammonia fumes hit them.
‘Here you are, Mama.’ She held the open bottle under her mother’s nose.
‘Thank you,’ Elizabeth gasped as she inhaled. She took the bottle from Alicia and held it under each nostril in turn. Alicia watched her apprehensively; she had not expected such an extreme reaction to her query.
After a few moments, with eyes still closed, Elizabeth asked, ‘Where did you hear such a dreadful word? You are not to mix with people who use such language.’
Nonplussed that one word could make a person feel faint, Alicia did not know how to reply. Finally she said, ‘An old woman in a crowd called a boy it, and I heard her.’
‘I see,’ Elizabeth swallowed. ‘You really must be careful about words you pick up from the lower classes. Fortunately, Polly speaks fairly well now – but even with her you should be careful about new words.’
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