Liza

by Irene Carr

  The house and its grounds were surrounded by a stone wall. Wrought-iron gates opened on to a long drive that led up to the Grange, standing grey and grim. There was no gatekeeper’s lodge and the gates looked not to have been closed for months, if ever. Grass grew tall around them. Liza quailed, then told herself she had not come all this way to give up now. She wiped water from her eyes to peer at the house. She knew she could not carry her box all that way so she dragged it inside the gate and into some bushes where it could not be seen from the road. She hesitated over leaving it, but did so because she had to. There was nothing of value in it, but it held all she had.

  She walked up through the puddles to the Grange. She was wearing her best shoes — in fact, the only ones she had — but they leaked, and an old felt hat that had been her mother’s, which sat soddenly on her damp hair. The house was a dozen times the size of Mrs Fanshaw’s, but there were still only three steps up to the front door. Liza found that cheering — not much to wash — but the house itself less so: it looked in need of a coat of paint and the curtains were drab. But if there was a position to be had she would not care about that. She climbed the steps and tapped at the massive oak door. Then she saw the handle set into the stone at one side and pulled it. She heard nothing for a minute or so, then the door opened silently on oiled hinges.

  The man who stood there was tall and spare, in black jacket and trousers with a knife-edge crease. His sandy hair was neatly brushed, his long face forbidding. He looked Liza over, from the soggy, shapeless hat to the down-at-heel shoes. ‘Aye?’

  ‘I’ve come about the job, sir, in your house.’

  ‘It is not my house. This is the residence of Mr Gresham. I am Mr Gillespie, the butler. And what job are you talking about?’ He spoke with a Scottish accent and did not put Liza at her ease. But her mother had warned her: ‘In a big house the butler is next to God Almighty.’

  She brushed wet hair from her face with the back of her hand. ‘I met this lass in Newcastle and she said—’

  ‘Oh, aye.’ Gillespie nodded. ‘That would be Bridie.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well, a lass like you has no business coming to the front door.’ He frowned down at her. ‘Go round to the back.’ And he shut the door.

  Liza retraced her steps. As she looked back down the drive she saw a ship far out at sea, a rough sea under the rain. The steamer trailed a long plume of smoke and Liza was reminded of her father. The thought of him and his love for her, then of her mother, put heart into her. She walked determinedly round the house to the rear. There were two doors, one large by a window that looked into a kitchen — Liza glimpsed women moving behind the steamed-up glass. The other was narrow and open, and Gillespie stood just inside. He said grudgingly, ‘Ye’d better come in,’ and Liza followed him into a small office. There was a table and an upright chair, a shelf with a number of ledgers and a fireplace with a glowing coal fire. This was known as the butler’s pantry.

  Gillespie sat on the chair and took a notebook, pen and ink from a drawer in the table. He hooked steel spectacles on to his ears and began: ‘Name? Age? Nearly fourteen?’ He peered over the spectacles. ‘You’re not very big.’

  ‘I’m strong,’ Liza protested.

  ‘Are ye now?’ He sniffed and went back to his book. ‘What work have you been doing?’

  ‘I want to be a lady’s maid.’

  ‘Oh, aye! You and a lot more! You’ll have to wait a few years for that.’

  ‘That’s what I meant: one day,’ Liza said meekly. ‘Now I’ll do anything.’

  ‘So you say. Previous experience? References?’

  Liza tried to evade the latter: ‘I worked for Mrs Fanshaw.’ She gave the address in Tynemouth.

  Gillespie noted it. ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘No, sir, but my mother taught me a lot. She worked in big houses.’

  ‘Let me see your reference,’ Gillespie said, hand out-stretched.

  Liza swallowed and said miserably, ‘I haven’t got one.’ She tried to explain, ‘Her niece — I’d known her at school and—’ How could she put it? ‘We didn’t get on. She caused trouble for me.’

  Gillespie’s outstretched hand was up now, signalling silence. ‘Are you saying you were dismissed without a reference?’ Liza could only admit it. ‘Aye, sir, but—’

  The hand was up again. ‘How long had you been there?’

  ‘Four weeks, sir.’

  Gillespie rubbed his face. He laid down pen and spectacles and shut the notebook. ‘So you’ve had only one position and that was with Mrs Fanshaw. You were dismissed after only four weeks without a reference. Your only knowledge of the work in a house like this is what you’ve learned from your mother.’ He, like many in his position, had seen the results of that before, in girls who thought they knew the work but had to be taught all over again. ‘Is that correct?’

  ‘Aye.’ Liza could not deny it. ‘But that lass tripped me when I was carrying a tray and then Piggy trampled all over my clean step—’

  The hand was up again and Gillespie was shaking his head, ‘Oh, aye, I expect you have an excuse.’

  There was a rap at the door. ‘Mr Gillespie? Mr Gresham would like a word, if you please.’

  ‘Oh, aye, I’ll be there right away.’ He got up from the chair. ‘Wait,’ he told Liza.

  * * *

  George Gresham was in the library, wrapped in a rug before a roaring fire, a listless, wasted old man. ‘Ah, there you are, Gillespie. Pour me a whisky, please, there’s a good chap.’

  ‘The doctor said not until after dinner, sir,’ the butler remonstrated mildly.

  ‘Never mind the doctor. It’s my whisky, not his. And he only wants me alive because he knows he’ll get no money from me when I’m dead.’

  Gillespie had made his token protest, as he did every day, and now poured the weak whisky and soda. ‘Would there be anything else, sir?’

  Old Gresham waved a skeletal hand, and Gillespie left with a stiff little bow. As he returned to his pantry he reflected that his difficulty in getting and keeping staff was down to the gloom of the house. There was always a hush about the place, as if its occupants were in the presence of death, which they were. Frederick Gresham was dying.

  And this little girl, hardly more than a child, would not do. She was too small, inexperienced, probably undisciplined from the tale she told. If he took her on she would prove another Bridie, here today, gone tomorrow ...

  * * *

  The ship Liza had seen had come from the Baltic and was bound for the Tyne with a cargo of grain. The smoke she trailed came not from her funnel but her hold where a fire had raged. William Morgan now climbed the ladder up to the deck with an unconscious man on his back. Hands came to take his burden from him as he reached the head of the ladder. Relieved of it, he swung his legs over the hatch coaming to stand on the deck where the canvas hoses snaked, fat with seawater. ‘It looks to be out but soak it down,’ he told the men who were playing the jets of water into the hold. Then he grinned. ‘Although the weather’s doing a good job of that anyway.’ He wiped off the rain that washed over his face, which was grimy from the fire below.

  He had just turned nineteen and this was his first voyage as mate. He was the most junior officer aboard but his captain was impressed with the tall young man, and even more so now when he reported on the bridge: ‘Gallagher was overcome by the smoke but I brought him up. I think the fire’s out but I’ll go down again when the smoke clears and see what damage has been done.’

  ‘Well done,’ his captain said.

  * * *

  Gillespie shoved open the door of his pantry and strode in. Liza stood bedraggled where he had left her, a pool of water around her feet. He remembered when he was twelve years old and in his first pair of shoes, leaving home for the first time to work in the big house. ‘I’ll give you a week’s trial,’ he said. ‘Now I suppose you’ll have to go for your box.’

  ‘I hid it down by the gate,’ Liza said, in a small v
oice.

  Gillespie sent one of the gardeners, who had been sitting in a potting shed watching the rain, to fetch it on a barrow.

  That night Liza wrote a postcard to her mother: ‘I have a better position now in a big house. This is my address.’

  * * *

  Before the week was out Gillespie had decided to keep her on. He found her eager to work, hungry to learn and well trained by her mother. Before the month was out old Gresham had died. In the autumn his heir and nephew, Jonathan Gresham, returned from South America with Vanessa, his wife, and their children. The house came to life with a new young regime. The following year Jonathan rented a house in London for the Season and Liza was one of the maids who travelled south to work there through the summer.

  * * *

  Jasper Barbour had reached man’s estate and also come to work in London. He had learned his trade in the back-streets of Liverpool and left to seek richer pickings and to avoid a growing reputation. In his first week in the capital he accosted a lone, elderly man in a dark and empty alley. Jasper was not tall but a thick-set, powerful man, brute-faced and fearsome in the gloom. He hefted a club and demanded, ‘Give us your purse.’ He expected it to be handed over, as it always had been before, his victims fearful for their lives.

  But the old man, too, had a weapon, a walking-stick, and defied him: ‘You scoundrel! I’ll give you nothing!’ He lashed out with the stick. Jasper was taken by surprise. He was too late to avoid the blow but deflected it so that it landed on his shoulder. He grunted with pain and rage, and madness gripped him. He beat down the walking-stick with his club and felled the old man, then belaboured him until the body lay still under his blows. He stooped over it, searched for and found the wallet. He took out the money, tossed aside the wallet and walked away.

  He went to a squalid tavern near the room he rented. The men in there had already summed him up as dangerous and gave him room. The young woman serving behind the bar was small-waisted and big-busted in a grubby blouse. She wore a beer-stained white apron over her dark skirt, and had a bold eye. ‘Give us a pint, Flora,’ he ordered. He tossed some coins on to the counter, took a long pull at the beer and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. This was only the second time he had seen Flora, but he knew what she wanted. He looked her over deliberately and saw her breathe faster.

  ‘Quiet in here tonight,’ he said. There were only a dozen in the bar and Flora was listlessly polishing glasses. She moistened her lips and nodded.

  ‘So come out wi’ me and see a bit o’ life.’

  ‘I’ll have to ask him.’

  ‘Ask be buggered. Tell him. I’ll make you a better offer than he will.’

  She went to the publican, taking off her apron. ‘I’m knocking off for the night.’

  He scowled at her. ‘Wotcha mean? Ye can’t walk out whenever you like.’

  ‘Aye, she can,’ Jasper said.

  The publican glared at him, but shrugged and turned his back. Flora tossed her head and reached for her coat. Outside, her arm in his, she asked Jasper, ‘What’s this better offer you promised?’

  ‘You’ll find out.’

  He took her to a music-hall, then to a succession of pubs and bought her supper. At one point they peered in at a tattooist’s window. ‘Go on!’ she challenged him. ‘Get a picture done on your chest.’ He laughed but had it done: a naked female with the name Flora beneath. She almost blushed.

  And at the end he took her to his bed.

  * * *

  Liza did not read the newspaper report of the murder in the alley, did not cross the path of Jasper Barbour, but one day his life would be bound up with hers.

  6

  SUMMER 1901, LONDON

  Flora panted and moaned with passion. Her discarded clothes lay with Jasper’s in a trail from the door to the big bed. A distant clock chimed one in the morning and he sighed and was still. Their coupling done she lay beside him. ‘What did you get tonight, then?’ she asked.

  ‘A box wi’ a lot o’ jewellery and a purse full o’ sovereigns.’

  ‘Let’s have a look.’ Flora rolled, naked, off the bed in a flailing of legs as Jasper watched. She padded downstairs to the hall, picked up the leather Gladstone bag and carried it back to the bedroom.

  ‘Come here,’ Jasper said.

  Flora glanced sideways at him, narrow-eyed. ‘You wait a minute.’ She up-ended the bag to empty its contents on to the carpet. ‘Ooh! Look!’ She picked out a gold necklace with a ruby pendant and slipped it over her head. The jewel gleamed in the valley between her breasts. ‘There’s some good stuff here.’ She shook the purse and counted the coins that fell out: ‘Twenty!’

  Jasper reached for a bottle that stood by the bed, pulled out its cork with his teeth and drank from the neck. Now Flora climbed on to the bed again. ‘What can I have?’ she wheedled.

  ‘No jewellery, I’ve told you that afore. If you go waltzing around wi’ diamonds hung all over you, people would wonder.’

  Flora pouted, and reached out a hand to fondle him. ‘Well, can I have a housemaid in here to do some o’ the work about this place? Every house in the street has a maid and some o’ them has a cook an’ all.’

  Jasper had made — stolen — a lot of money over the last two years, and a few months before, they had moved into this house, detached and with rooms for servants. It was one in a street of middle-class dwellings, the homes of solicitors, accountants, a doctor or two. Now he said, ‘No maid. I won’t have one because there’s too much to be seen. Gawd knows what she’d find when she was cleaning.’ Most of his loot he sold to a fence and banked the proceeds, but some items he kept. There was a handsome clock, an oil painting of a nude, and others.

  Flora tried again: ‘The neighbours might talk ‘cause we haven’t got anybody.’

  ‘No, they won’t. Not them. They’ll keep themselves to themselves like they always do. You just smile nicely and say, "My husband works in the City," in your posh voice, and they’ll be happy. Now, come here.’ And he dragged her down to him.

  * * *

  ‘Why, they’ve not been properly married for years!’ Ada’s voice was lowered but Cecily, standing in her father’s study, could hear the maid clearly. She stood still, dressed in only a thin robe but warmed by the morning sunlight streaming through the windows.

  Jane, newly up from the country and being shown the ropes by Ada, said ‘Ooh! Really?’

  ‘Well, they’ve got separate rooms. He’s always going off for days at a time. He’s been in France for the past week, supposed to be on business. I know what sort o’ business that is. And she has men come here. They stay in one of the guest rooms so it all looks right and proper, but we’ve seen them going back to it in the mornings.’

  ‘When the cat’s away ...’ Jane sniggered.

  ‘... get another Tom,’ Ada finished. They both laughed, then she went on, ‘That’s done.’ They had lit the fire in the breakfast room and now returned to the kitchen.

  Cecily was no more than irritated. She had overheard that kind of conversation more than once over the years. She knew that whatever her parents did was right, and those who whispered behind their backs were prissy or envious. Now she decided that if she ever had the ordering of this household Ada would go. She looked in the bookcase, found the volume she wanted and carried it upstairs to the schoolroom. It had once been the nursery, but the nurse had long since departed and Cecily, now fifteen, was taught by a governess. The latest in a succession of appointments was Miss Estelle Beaumont. She had told her pupil to write an essay on the Norman Conquest but the subject bored Cecily. She had other things to do with her time so she would copy out a chunk of the encyclopedia.

  Estelle Beaumont was slender, comely, shy and of good family, but she was without money and had been alone in the world since the death of her father. In the schoolroom that morning she read the hastily written essay and ventured, ‘It is — scribbled, rather.’

  ‘Well, you’ve read it so it’s clear enough,’ Ceci
ly said carelessly.

  ‘And it seems to be a copy of the entry in the encyclopedia.’

  Cecily reddened. ‘It’ll be right, then, so what does it matter? And don’t you dare accuse me of cheating. That’s just quoting.’

  If Estelle hadn’t known before why there had been a succession of governesses in this house, she did now. She tried another tack: ‘Sit up, dear, straight back. It’s most important for your posture.’ She demonstrated, advancing her shapely bosom. It was at that point that the schoolroom door opened and Charles Spencer entered.

  ‘Daddy!’ Cecily shrieked. She jumped up and threw her arms around him. ‘When did you get home?’

  ‘Just now.’ He held her, but his eyes were looking over her head at Estelle. ‘Good day to you, Miss Beaumont.’

  She bobbed him a curtsey. ‘Good day, sir. I trust you had a comfortable journey.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Take me to the park, Daddy,’ Cecily said excitedly. ‘Or for a drive. I’m bored with this horrid old schoolwork. Please!’

  But Charles disengaged her arms from round his neck. ‘I’m sorry, but I have to go to the Exchange. Business, you know. Now, you be a good girl and go on with your lessons. You’re lucky to have a pretty governess like Miss Beaumont.’ That made Estelle blush, and Cecily scowled. She returned to her desk as he left, with a last, lingering glance at the governess.

  Deprived of the company of her adored father, Cecily took revenge on the nearest and easiest victim. She determined to make Miss Beaumont’s life a misery, and did so. She flounced, argued, sneered, and when threatened that she would be reported to her mother, replied confidently, ‘Mama won’t do anything.’

  And Mama didn’t. ‘My daughter is very sensitive and highly strung. She only needs sympathetic handling.’

  Estelle cried herself to sleep, praying that the morrow would bring an improvement. But it did not.

  A week had gone by and Cecily was sitting at the window of the schoolroom, idly watching the traffic below. Her governess had gone down to Charles Spencer’s study to fetch a volume from his bookcase — Cecily had refused to go. Suddenly the schoolroom door burst open. Miss Beaumont turned a tear-stained face to Cecily, then ran into her bedroom next door. Cecily heard her racking sobs and sat still, taken aback, for a while. Then, cautiously, she approached the bedroom door and peeped in: Miss Beaumont was kneeling by her narrow bed in an attitude of prayer, her handkerchief pressed to her eyes. Her shoulders shook.