by Rose Lerner
Sukey bit her lip. First Mrs. Khaleel, and now this? But she was deadly curious, and after all, if Molly were stealing, she could break the promise with a clear conscience. She nodded.
“It’s my fault Mr. Perkins touched Thea,” Molly whispered, her face crumpling further.
“How could it be your fault?”
Molly’s voice sank still lower. “I—I’m so ashamed. I did things for him. I touched him.”
Sukey’s eyes widened. “You mean you liked him?”
Molly shook her head as if to shake off the very idea. “I’m still a virgin,” she said fiercely. “I can still get married. I—he told me if I didn’t do it, he’d make Thea do it instead. But he was putting his hands on Thea anyway. I should have gone to Mr. Summers. I should have told, and instead I committed awful sins, I let him live here—I didn’t know he was at her. I swear I didn’t know.” She rubbed her hands on her apron. “I can still smell him on my hands.”
Sukey had no idea what to say. “You did it to protect Thea. You meant well.”
A tear slipped down Molly’s cheek. “I wanted a house key. He gave me one. I’m a monster.” She hid her face in her hands.
Sukey wished very hard that someone else, who knew what to say, were here instead. But for some reason, Molly was talking to her. She put a hesitant hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Why did you want a key? Are you meeting a boy?”
Molly gave a strangled laugh. “Meeting a boy? You think I’m sneaking out to have fun? Sarah has consumption.” She bit her lip, hard, and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “She has consumption and she can’t work in the cold and wet. She’ll starve if I don’t help her. I’m so tired. I just want—I’m so tired.”
How many people’s work was Molly doing? Sukey put an arm around her. “You can’t carry the whole world on your shoulders. You’re not tall enough.”
“Thea hates me.”
Sukey thought of last week, when she’d wanted to ask John if he still liked her, and then realized he wanted to ask her the same thing. “Have you talked to her about what happened?”
“I can’t. She must hate me. I can’t.”
“You should talk to her.” Sukey squeezed her shoulder. “Better to know for sure, one way or the other. But I don’t think she hates you.”
Molly drew in a deep breath. “You promised not to tell your husband.”
Sukey felt cold. She’d learned why Molly was sneaking out—not to get herself pregnant—and she couldn’t tell him. He’d be furious if he knew she knew, and he was so worried. “I won’t. But he’d understand. He understands thinking he has to do everything himself.”
Molly’s eyebrows drew together. “I do have to help Sarah. I’m not following her around telling her the china is streaky. I’m helping her.”
Privately, Sukey thought Molly’s friends would never get off the teat if Molly didn’t pop them off, but she didn’t say so. She didn’t say, At this rate, maybe you’ll get yourself sacked and you can help Sarah all day every day. She didn’t say that helping Thea hadn’t worked out so well. It seemed like kicking Molly when she was down.
Besides, she felt ashamed. She would never go without sleep to do extra washing or risk her job or touch someone she disliked to help anybody. She was self-serving, when you got down to it. Cold, maybe. She looked out for herself, and wished other people would do the same.
* * *
She spent the rest of that long, awful day following her neatly written list.
One o’clock p.m. Staff dines in the kitchen. John appeared, looking tired. Thea did not. John went and fetched her, and they all ate in silence.
Half past one. Needlework. Sukey was hemming a new drugget to protect the carpet under the dining room table. The wool had been embroidered by one of Mr. Summers’s married daughters.
Embroidery—thinking of pretty things and creating them—was for ladies, and hemming was for Sukey. She’d no desire to trade places; you could hem and think of something else.
Unfortunately, today she mostly thought about that nasty look on John’s face, saying clear as words, We both know you’ve got the sack a few times, because you’re a lazy slattern.
Half the time she shook with indignation, and half the time she wanted to cry. He’d been so kind about Mrs. Humphrey. He’d trusted her to do him proud at the vicarage, and she’d tried. She really had. But she didn’t know how to do anything properly, and he didn’t see the trying, only the failing. Usually she and Molly chatted a bit, or sang while they stitched. But today Molly didn’t say a word as she darned the household’s stockings.
Half past four p.m. Verify that fire has been lit and dressing room prepared for Mr. Summers to change for dinner. Help Mrs. Khaleel in the kitchen. Put plates in warmer by the oven. Remember, dinner must be served HOT.
“Hot” was in block letters, underlined twice.
I’m not an idiot, she grumbled to herself. I don’t go about thinking dinner would be better cold.
Mr. Summers was dining out anyway. The staff ate a silent tea together in the kitchen at six. “Mr. Summers will return late,” John said. “After nine o’clock, when you have prepared his rooms for the night and put everything in readiness for tomorrow, you may all go to bed early if you like.”
Sukey carried her workbox into the butler’s pantry for the evening, along with a branch of candles and a stack of Mr. Summers’s clothes, on which John had marked tiny tears and frays by pinning scraps of old linen to the fabric.
At nine o’clock she rolled out their pallet and changed into her night things. The house was silent, except for someone pouring water in the kitchen. John, refreshing Mr. Summers’s pitcher so that whenever he chose to come home, his wash water’d be neither too cold nor too hot.
Sometimes it felt like all the care he’d given her when they met—Mr. Summers got it now. She hated it. But it was pitiful, too.
John wouldn’t agree. He’d say, It’s a quiet time to read, waiting up for Mr. Summers. But she knew if she went upstairs, he’d not be reading. She’d see him fussing with Mr. Summers’s nightshirt and banyan and slippers and nightcap: Were they warm? Were they hanging too near the fire? Were the coals in the warming pan still hot, and should it be moved to another part of the bed?
Hours of work for a half-second less of chill, and would Mr. Summers even notice the difference? And John had worn himself out, nothing left for his wife.
She wrapped the pelisse he’d bought her around her nightgown and went into the kitchen.
He turned at the sound of her footsteps. “Mrs. Toogood.”
“Mr. Toogood.”
They stood looking at each other a while.
“I’m glad you came in,” he said slowly. “I wish to apologize for earlier. Molly was right. I was low, and nasty.”
She hadn’t expected that. “Then you didn’t mean it, about my lacking common sense? About my never looking at things in the light?”
He frowned, annoyed again. “I don’t think you lack for common sense at all. That’s why I can’t understand… But that isn’t what I wanted to say. Thank you for stopping the argument. I should not have lost my temper with you or with Molly. It was undignified, but worse, it was unkind. Especially to you. I have already spoken with her, but I wished to… I thought you might like an evening to yourself.”
She blinked. He’d been fretting over this all day too? It broke her heart all at once, the endless pains he took. The way he’d written HOT like that, and underlined it. The way he’d probably spent hours thinking of the right words to describe his behavior: Undignified, unkind, which is worse? She hid a smile. Maybe Mr. Summers didn’t get all of it, after all. “You were low and nasty. Don’t forget it.”
He nodded.
“But you were right,” she admitted reluctantly. “I’m used to being maid-of-all-work in a boarding house for eight women, where there
’s never time in the day to do everything I need to do. So I learned to do things halfway. Good enough. I know that it isn’t really good enough. Not for you.”
He sighed and sat at the kitchen table, pressing his forehead into his fists. “I don’t want to be like my father. Do you know what the servants used to say at Tassell Hall?”
She shook her head.
“Not ‘The room looks well’ or ‘Dinner is excellent’. It was always ‘It’s too good’. And they smirked when they said it. Because they meant it was done to my father’s standards, and it wasn’t a compliment to him. But I— It itches at me when something is askew, or spotty, or dusty. It itches and nags until I have to speak.”
“Your father isn’t going to inspect your work here.”
He waved a hand impatiently. “That isn’t it. I’m like him. I inherited his fussiness, and I don’t know how to stop it. I hate it when things aren’t done properly.”
She pulled out a chair and sat opposite him, tucking her chilly hands into her armpits. “Everyone in this house wants things to be done properly.”
He sighed. “Except Thea.”
“Except Thea,” she agreed. “We’ll protect her until she gets back on her feet. We will.”
“But ought we to? What if by shielding her from consequences, we’re preventing her from improving? And don’t we have a responsibility to Mr. Summers, not to allow him to be imposed upon?”
“I don’t pretend to understand her.” Part of her still wanted to give Thea a good slap. “But…”
My mum would beat me black-and-blue if I got myself in trouble like that, Sukey’d said once about Mrs. Dymond’s poor pregnant sister. But when she’d met a man who tempted her, Sukey hadn’t been any better than she should be, herself.
Mrs. Grimes would beat her black-and-blue if she slept the day away in self-pity too. But Sukey had never been in Thea’s place, and she wanted to be her mother about as much as John wanted to be his father. Just because they’d never received much toleration didn’t mean they couldn’t give it. “Mr. Summers also has a responsibility to her. She was insulted and abused under his roof, by a man he put over her. It wouldn’t be very Christian to turn her off for being unhappy about it. We’d have to make him see that.”
He let out a breath. “Yes. You’re right. He would see that. Eventually.”
“Everyone wants to do things properly,” she said again. “It isn’t the carp-pie we mind. It’s being made to feel small. We’re all of us working hard, doing the best we know how, and you don’t seem to know it. You never notice what’s done well, only what isn’t.”
He nodded.
“Do you remember the raisins? You said it was false economy.”
He licked his lip. “It was.”
“Hoarding praise is false economy as well. And I told myself I didn’t want to live where everything was weighed and doled out, that I wanted to be where people were generous with each other.”
His lips parted as if he wanted to speak, but she hurried on, wanting to get it all out before she lost her nerve. Wanting him to hear her in this brief space where she seemed to believe she deserved it. “I thought you’d give me that, but lately it seems as if the only time you think I’m good for anything is when we’re—when I’m spreading my legs for you.”
Even now, saying it, she wanted to do it. Her cunt ached just looking at him, so handsome and strong, and he’d make her feel safe and happy and as if he worshipped her. As if he was glad to have married her. I didn’t want an evening to myself, she could say, and wrap her arms around his neck, and he’d…
He got out of his chair and came to kneel by hers. “I know you work hard. Do you want to know something I admire very much about you?”
She nodded.
“At Mrs. Pengilly’s, you hurried in the kitchen, but you polished her silver with great care. And here, those porcelain figurines—you pay attention to what your employers love most, and you make it shine for them. It’s one of the kindest things I’ve ever seen.”
She blinked. “Truly?” He didn’t think her a lazy good-for-naught after all?
He tugged her hand from her armpit and kissed her knuckles. Then he pulled off her wedding ring and wiped it with his handkerchief, so his spit wouldn’t tarnish it. “I should have said so before. I’m sorry.” He slipped the ring back on as if…as if he worshipped her.
She blinked back unexpected tears. He didn’t own anything to polish, but on a sudden she wanted to make the world shine for him. She felt almost as if she could. Or—as if she could help him see that the world was shining already, despite the smudges. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” she said cheekily. “Now try that on the girls.”
* * *
As he went about his work over the next days, John tried to look for things to praise in others. It was difficult. His eyes always went first to the scratch, the uneven wax patina, the faint stain left on the marble. His ears caught a dish clinking against the sink, or furniture scratching the floor.
He watched and listened for mistakes without conscious thought, and when he saw them, everything in him leapt to correct them with the same instinctive urgency that sent one darting forward to catch a falling vase.
He told himself, over and over, that a small lump of wax would cause no disaster. That Mr. Summers had never once in the weeks John had presided over the staff complained to him about the quality of service. He made himself bear it at least a few times in ten and smother his criticisms. And he tried, awkwardly, to pay his underlings compliments. He prowled the house, forcing his eye to linger on what was correct instead of sliding over it in search of what stood out. “The bed was perfectly made today, Mrs. Toogood, thank you,” he said, his face flaming hot.
He’d known it embarrassed him to receive compliments—he never knew what to say or do—but he’d been surprised to discover giving them was nearly as bad. Sukey ducked her head, brows drawing together.
He’d annoyed her. His heart misgave him. Of course he had. In her place he’d be thinking, Not the bed again! Trying to get into my good graces now, are you? I know I did it right, and I don’t need any pat on the head from you.
A compliment, he realized, required mutual esteem in a way a correction did not. It required him to believe that Sukey cared for his opinion. And why should she care for it? Why should any of them? There had certainly been no signs that they did. But then a smile spread across her face and she said shyly, “I think I’ve got the knack of it.”
Hoarding praise is false economy as well. Why had he denied them both this small pleasure, this moment of charity? Because he was embarrassed? Because he’d never had it growing up, perhaps; it felt as awkward and unnatural as the first time he’d held a razor.
At least, unlike with the razor, his father wasn’t here to tell him he was doing it wrong and snort when he cut himself. Learning new skills was always embarrassing, but one had to soldier on, just as he expected his staff to soldier on with their lists.
He could not stop himself from hating to see things done incorrectly. But he could stop himself from withholding praise when it was due.
Mrs. Khaleel, straightforward woman, responded to his careful compliments (The larder is wonderfully neat and You always trim the roast so carefully and The soup smelled so good Mr. Summers caught my stomach rumbling—oh, that one was hard to admit! In future he’d eat a sandwich before serving dinner, to prevent a recurrence) with a nod of acknowledgment and a “Thank you, Mr. Toogood.” But she began setting aside morsels of his favorite foods for him, and he was careful to always eat them with a show of gladness.
Larry was easy; he soaked up praise like a sponge, face glowing. To John’s secret surprise, it seemed even to inspire not laxity, but more care in him. The wax on the mahogany furniture grew smoother and the lampwicks more neatly trimmed—evidently in hopes of further praise, which John bemusedly gave—and La
rry took to bringing John his mother’s letters the moment they arrived.
Molly was a harder nut to crack. She responded to every compliment with a sharp nod of her head and a muttered, “Thank you, sir.” John would have liked to give up, as it was entirely evident that she was thinking, I don’t give a damn for your opinion. But he made himself continue, contriving to find some private amusement in pretending not to notice her snub, and in her annoyance at that.
It was difficult to find things to praise in Thea’s work, as she continued not to do most of it. But at least he could find her when he looked for her now; he thanked her for that. He reminded himself that he could not expect a sea change overnight and went on as best he could. But sometimes he remembered vividly why he had never wanted to be a butler. He had wanted to be a valet, and answer to no one, and have no one answer to him, and do his own work and be done with it.
* * *
Sukey looked at herself in the mirror after three hours of hard labor. Earlier, twisting her wet, clean hair up in curl-papers with the other girls, she’d almost been sorry not to stay at the vicarage and get ready together. Mrs. Khaleel had promised to dress everyone’s hair.
(The servants generally bathed Saturday night after their half-holiday, to be fresh for church, but today, as it was Christmastime and the New Year and they’d all petitioned for it, bath and half-holiday alike had been moved to Friday to allow for the New Year’s Day ball.)
Staying at home would have been more fun. Sukey was cold, and stuck with pins, and her head hurt from Mrs. Gilchrist pulling at her hair. But she didn’t understand why Mrs. Dymond always kicked up such a shindy about that because it was worth it. “You were right. No one will recognize me.”
Mrs. Gilchrist drew herself up. “I never said any such thing. Naturally everyone will recognize you. You always look like this. The gown merely calls attention to it.” She said it with the confidence of one quoting revealed religion.
Sukey smiled at her. “I never argue with a compliment.”