‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Take care of yourself, Miss Barnett, and don’t get caught in any more riots. You’ll feel discomfort for some days, but the bruises and cuts will heal.’
Fanny looked up at him with wonderment, her pain forgotten. What a lovely man! Miss Barnett!
The encounter sparked a devotion which was to last her into old age. Many, many years later, she was to become his housekeeper.
On his way out, the young doctor met Alicia standing anxiously at the door of her mother’s bedroom. Polly introduced them and Alicia shook his hand.
He looked at her with little interest, as the full glare of the evening sun struck her through the landing window. It showed him a very tidy, slim woman of almost no colouring, a firm mouth clamped too tightly, as if she, too, might be in pain. After he had answered her anxious inquiries about Fanny, he mentioned that Dr Willis had asked him to find out how her mother was, since he had not seen her for several weeks.
Alicia sighed. ‘She is, as usual, totally forgetful. We never leave her alone, except when she has had her usual dose to make her sleep at night.’
She watched him descend the stairs with Polly and then went back to pick up her mother’s sewing, books and jigsaw puzzles with which she had tried to amuse her.
Her mother’s coordination was becoming worse, she thought sadly. She would put a few stitches into a petticoat that had lain in the sewing basket for months, and then drop it irritably because she could not place the stitches as she wanted. She could still occasionally manage a simple jigsaw puzzle, when someone sat by her and encouraged her to try, but her only true enjoyment, as far as Alicia could see, was to listen to her playing light classical pieces on the drawing-room piano. So every afternoon, of late, she had seated Elizabeth in an easy chair while she herself played. Somewhere in the recesses of her mother’s damaged brain there seemed to linger a memory, not much more than an instinct, that the piano represented much happier times, when Elizabeth had played at parties she had given. Perhaps, thought Alicia, Andrew Crossing had stood by her to turn the pages for her. Nothing, however, would persuade Elizabeth to try to play once more, and as the music swirled around her, tears would run slowly down her mottled cheeks.
Alicia allowed her mind to stray from her tidying up and her sleeping mother, while she considered Dr Bell. She could not remember ever speaking to such a young professional man and she wondered if he were married. Then she told herself savagely not to be such a fool. She was not free to marry while her mother lived. Furthermore, she was now twenty-five years old, too old for marriage.
Chapter Twenty-Five
I
One February morning in 1913, Alicia received a registered letter from a West Kirby lawyer, informing her of the death of her Aunt Clara. He enclosed a freshwater pearl necklace left to her by her Aunt. She had died, he wrote, from a severe bout of influenza and he regretted having to send her such bad tidings. As the Executor of her Will, he needed to know the names and addresses of any other relations who should be informed.
Alicia berated herself for not going to see her Aunt on her afternoons off; but she had flinched at spending her precious few hours of freedom sitting beside yet another invalid, and she had kept deferring a visit. Now it was too late. She had, however, written to her at Christmas and Easter, ever since she had been a small girl, which was how the lawyer must have found her address. The fact that he needed the addresses of other members of the family indicated that Aunt Clara had not received letters from either Florence or Charles.
With tears in her eyes, she wrote to the lawyer and gave the addresses of Florence, Charles, Uncle Harold and, finally, of Uncle Henry in Ceylon, who she believed was the final inheritor of her maternal grandfather’s estate. Uncle Henry, she remembered with wry amusement, had never been known to write to anybody and she had no recollection of his visiting her mother – he must have come home at one point or another, she ruminated, but she could not remember his doing so. She wondered if he had managed to live until now – long enough to collect a part of the Reversionary Interest from his father’s Estate now available to him.
Alicia also wrote immediately to Charles, who went to West Kirby to check that his aunt had received proper burial and a suitable monument. The lawyer had seen to both matters, as instructed by Aunt Clara in her Will. ‘Do this, so that I am no trouble to my young relations,’ she had told the lawyer.
On his return, Charles came straight to see his mother and Alicia.
‘Have you told Mother?’ he asked Alicia.
‘No. I didn’t think I could make her understand.’
In some dim way, Elizabeth always seemed to recognize her son, and, when he told her gently about her sister, Clara’s, death, she seemed to understand, because she exclaimed quite clearly, ‘Oh, no!’ She did not cry, however, and was soon talking in a fuddled way to herself.
‘What about Florence?’ Charles inquired.
‘I thought I’d let the lawyer do it. I felt I could not stand Florence gushing all over Mother, who might be frightened and yet not understand what had happened. Flo always flounders so – perhaps because she’s so tired.’
‘She’s not really tired,’ he replied with a grin. ‘She used to be worn out with the children. But since they left home, she is become pretty spry. She still runs all the church’s women’s groups. She just takes to her couch when Clarence is at home.’
‘What on earth for?’ Alicia was startled by this peculiar behaviour.
‘Well, you know. Our Clarence always wants to leap into bed, even at his age. And Flo isn’t the type.’
‘Charles, I think you are being very vulgar.’
‘No, I’m not. It’s a reality of life – and it’s great fun, if you haven’t had absurd, old-fashioned ideas put into your head by a lot of school ma’ams – and so many women have.’
‘Charles, you’re talking to a single woman who knows nothing about the secrets of marriage.’
‘Sorry.’ He grinned down at her, and she felt suddenly left out, deprived of the knowledge of what fun was.
What was fun? Though Polly had explained matters of sex quite baldly to her, she had not suggested that there was particular fun in it. What was she missing?
She looked back on the dragging years of her adult life, spent trying to care for her parents. Now she had given up even trying to entertain her mother, which, at one time, when she had got a response from Elizabeth, had been an entertainment for herself. Now life was a steady, deadening routine, enlivened only by her afternoon off.
To try to keep Alicia from going out of her mind herself, Polly increasingly encouraged her to do all the shopping and go for walks in the park. When Mrs Hunter invited her to tea next door, she would say firmly, ‘Don’t worry about your Mam. Fanny’s very good with her. You go for an hour.’ Polly herself rarely went out, except to visit her sister, Mary, on her day off or perhaps to go with her to a music hall.
With the same upright carriage as her mother, Alicia would walk through Princes Park, even onwards to Sefton Park, a nondescript, middle-aged-looking woman, plainly dressed in a long grey skirt and a matching three-quarter length coat nipped in at the waist. Her fair hair was covered by out-of-date hats, trimmed and retrimmed with bits of satin culled from the boundless odds and ends of her mother’s old clothes stacked in trunks in the attic. Two large hatpins anchored the hats to her head and were regarded by her, as by most women, as a useful weapon if attacked. But none of the young bucks who strolled through the park at the weekends would make a pass at such a prim-looking lady, and, anyway, the park keepers were always in evidence to keep order in their domain.
Other residents of Upper Canning Street had become accustomed to seeing her in the street and nearby shops. They would bow politely and pass on, though many of them had never heard the scandal of her origins. They had, however, heard of her mad mother. As one sharp-tongued inhabitant put it, ‘It’s a most peculiar household, I hear. A crazy old woman and a coupl
e of servants who don’t know their place and live as if they were part of the family; the craziness must run in the family. And then Colonel Milfort used to live next door to them – and we all know about him. Now there are the Bottomleys there – a very loud, vulgar family – not nice at all; I don’t allow my children to mix with theirs. The whole of that end of the street seems to have gone down dreadfully.’
So nobody spoke to Alicia.
Fanny visited the other maids up and down the street and often talked to the Bottomleys’ skivvy, as they both scoured their respective front steps. Fanny called the neighbours a lot of jangling old biddies, and she would throw her scrubbing brush into the bucket of dirty water at the bottom of the steps, and say viciously sometimes, ‘I’d like to scupper ’em. Our Missus and Miss Alicia is the very salt.’
In the hope of getting some help and, perhaps, a little social life for Alicia, Uncle Harold went out to visit Florence, without result.
‘They are simply too busy to take on anything else,’ Alicia told him gently, when he mentioned his visit and his reason for it.
‘They’re simply too selfish,’ he replied downrightly. He had tried without success to persuade his wife to invite Alicia for a little visit, to give her a holiday. His wife had loftily refused, saying, ‘She is not a member of the family. Why should I be bothered with such a bore?’
For the sake of peace in his household, he had not pressed the point. He had said soberly to Alicia, ‘You’re carrying a very heavy load for the family. And anything I can do to lighten it, I will do.’
She had kissed the old man impulsively, and he had gone red in the face with embarrassment.
II
One evening, as her mother continued her eternal pacing up and down the room and Alicia watched her as she sewed herself a blouse, her mother began to mumble and tears to course down her face.
It was not the first time in her slow decline that Alicia had seen her weep, but it grieved her, and she jumped quickly from her chair and ran to Elizabeth to put her arms around her.
Elizabeth recoiled as if she had been attacked and pushed Alicia away. Then she backed away from her daughter, like a frightened cat. Shocked at her obvious alarm, Alicia stood staring uncertainly at her.
After a few seconds, Elizabeth resumed her unsteady pacing, and coming back across the room, she finally faced Alicia head on. Not knowing what to do, Alicia tensely held her ground.
Elizabeth, seeing her full face, said brokenly, through her tears, ‘Alicia, dear.’
‘Mama,’ Alicia responded tentatively, and moved slowly towards her mother. They embraced warmly. Alicia was crying. Her mother had never held her like this before.
‘I must have scared her when I ran to her,’ she chided herself.
‘When is Andrew coming?’ Elizabeth asked, as she slowly loosed her hold on Alicia. She spoke much more clearly than she had done for a long time.
Perplexed, Alicia answered her, ‘I don’t know, Mama.’ She slowly took out her handkerchief and wiped her mother’s wet cheeks.
Andrew? Andrew Crossing, of course.
Deadly curious, she asked, ‘Do you miss him, Mama?’
But Elizabeth’s tattered brain had closed off. She smiled her usual charming smile and turned to walk some more.
Thereafter, Alicia always moved very carefully in her mother’s presence and instructed Fanny and Polly to do the same.
It was, however, the last time that Elizabeth recognized her daughter, and, as Alicia steadied her mother when she walked, fed her, washed her, dressed her and dealt with her total incontinence, she would weep herself and cry, ‘How long, O Lord, how long?’
III
Alicia and Polly were great newspaper readers; the arrival of the morning paper was often the only interesting event of their day. Fanny, however, had never learned to read and she got her news from the seamen and dockers she picked up around the Pier Head on her days off. The seamen sailed in rusty freighters to Hamburg and Trieste, to Istanbul, Odessa and Murmansk, to Madras and Vladivostock, and every port in between. Though they did not see a great deal of the places in which they docked, they picked up gossip in the bars and streets. When they returned home and had exhausted their complaints about women, and the food in the ships of their various great companies, they enlarged upon what they had seen and heard abroad. So it was Fanny who first said that the constant quarrels between the Balkan States would lead to a very big war. Alicia and Polly pooh-poohed the idea; the only place to be afraid of was Germany, and the Kaiser would never actually make war on his English royal relations.
On June 28th, 1914, Francis Ferdinand, heir to the throne of Austria – Hungary, and his wife, Sophia, were assassinated by Bosnian students while on a visit to Sarajevo, a lovely, almost oriental town, which few people in Britain had ever heard of.
Absorbed in their daily struggle to cope with Elizabeth, Polly, Fanny and Alicia were unaware that the death of this dogmatic prince would turn their lives upside down. They spent the last fragile days of the world they knew encouraging and half-carrying Elizabeth downstairs to the garden, to get the sun. The weather was perfect, the half-wild roses ran riot up the brick walls of the garden and Alicia wished, as always, that she had time to keep the garden tidy.
After they had set Elizabeth down in a chair on the over-grown path, she seemed to enjoy the warmth and colour and forgot her earlier intransigence. She leaned back and watched small, fat clouds drift across the sky. Alicia cut a rose, removed its thorns and gave it to her to hold.
Polly sat down on the back steps and began to turn the pages of the evening newspaper, and as she perused the headlines, she said uneasily, ‘Aye, I’m that glad our Billy’s away in Canada. I wouldn’t want ’im in a war – though he’s no kitten by this time. Same age as you, add a year – too old to fight.’
Since her mother seemed at peace, Alicia knelt down and began to weed round a clump of delphiniums. ‘Billy seems to have done awfully well in Alberta, doesn’t he?’
‘Aye, he’s a bright lad is our Billy, and he always did love horses. Now he’s got land to breed them on, he’ll not look back.’
Alicia smiled. ‘He’ll be sending for you at last, Pol.’
‘Not he. He’s forgotten wot he promised; and anyways I wouldn’t leave you, luv.’
IV
It was in January 1915, that Fanny dropped a bombshell.
After Elizabeth had been put to bed, the three of them were seated round the gas-fire in the morning-room. Between the two maids, on the floor, sat a jug of ale which Fanny had fetched from the nearest public house; it was a custom which Alicia had never queried because the maids had nearly always enjoyed an evening pint together.
Fanny cleared her throat and, without preamble, announced, ‘I’m goin’ into munitions next week.’
Alicia’s heart missed a beat and the little colour in her cheeks fled. Polly put down her glass and asked belligerently, ‘Wot you mean?’
‘I’m goin’ to fill shells with – well, with whatever they fill shells with.’
‘You’re going to leave us, Fan?’ Alicia was incredulous.
Fanny shuffled her feet uneasily and her ale slopped into the hearth. She cursed under her breath. Then she replied steadily, though averting her eyes from Alicia, ‘Yes, Miss Allie. They pay like a ship’s crew on leave – you wouldn’t believe how much. And I haven’t got nothing saved for me old age, except what your Pa left me.’
‘You’re crazy,’ Polly told her sourly. She took a sip from her glass, and then said, ‘It’ll cost you more ’n you earn to live.’
‘No, it won’t. I bin talking it over with some of the other maids what has left – they’ve got good clothes and all from it.’
Alicia was suddenly terrified. Suppose Polly left as well! What would she do? She glanced nervously at the older woman and, as if she had read her mind, Polly turned to her. ‘Don’t take on, luv. Your old Polly’s got more sense.’
Though her lips were trembling, Ali
cia smiled at her. But Fanny, also, was a most important part of her life and she was very fond of her. She gave a quivering sigh and said, ‘I’m really sad, Fan. I know we don’t pay you an awful lot. But you can be sure of it every week – and you’ve got a good bed and food – and uniform.’
Fanny shifted uneasily in her chair and put out a hand to touch Alicia’s knee, as she replied, ‘I know, Miss, and don’t think I’m not grateful. But this is a chance for me to put something by – and I don’t never want to see the inside of a workhouse again – I seen enough when I were a kid.’
Alicia tried to still the frightened beat of her heart and could not. The war was suddenly in her own home, and she did not know what to do.
‘Think it over, Fan, before you make up your mind,’ she urged through dry lips.
‘I thunk about it, Miss. I thunk about it a long time. Mebbe Mr Harold can get you some help.’ She took a sip of ale, and then went on a little defiantly, ‘And somebody’s got to fill shells.’
Reluctantly, Alicia agreed.
This idea of helping in the war had already begun to percolate into kitchens and drawing-rooms. Women rolled bandages and knitted balaclavas and gloves for soldiers. A few brave women had volunteered to drive ambulances in France; and the newspapers had reported that women, dragging their long skirts behind them in the mud, had helped with the winter ploughing, because so many farm labourers had simply left the fields to volunteer.
Alicia got up from her easy chair and began to pace up and down the room. ‘I’ll miss you terribly, Fan,’ she said suddenly, and burst into tears. Fanny whipped out of her chair and put her arms round her, and they cried together, while Polly stared into her ale glass. She was so tired already. How would they manage?
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