Salem Street

by Anna Jacobs

  The new general maid in the house was a twelve-year-old girl called Susan Marker, daughter of a smallholder over Bacup way. As she was one of the eight children who had survived out of fourteen births, she told Annie and Ellie earnestly that she’d have to make her own way in the world, so her mam had said she’d best go into service. Katy had shared an attic bedroom with Mabel, but Mabel flatly refused to share with a twelve-year-old skivvy and threatened to give notice if forced to do so. And since Mabel liked to make herself useful acting as lady’s maid, as well as performing her other duties, Annabelle did not wish to dispense with her services. Annie and Ellie did not want to be separated, either, so Cook persuaded Mrs Lewis to let them clear out one of the little boxrooms for Susan.

  After a lot of fuss and bother, and sheer bad temper from Mrs Lewis, a governess was hired for Miss Marianne. She was found through an agency in Manchester and was the third one that Mrs Lewis had interviewed. Annabelle had very definite views on the sort of woman she wanted to bring up her daughter. “She must be ladylike, but not pretty, and she must speak properly, for really, Marianne is beginning to talk as broadly as the servants!”

  “Then you should talk to her more yourself,” said Jeremy.

  “You know how busy I am. It’s just like you to interrupt me all the time! We were talking about governesses. The one we appoint must be able to teach her French, embroidery, the piano and sketching.”

  “What about reading and writing – or aren’t they important?”

  “Of course they are. But Marianne is already a good little reader and too much knowledge is fatal for a female’s chances. Men don’t like bluestockings for wives.”

  The devil was in him that night. “Oh, some of us would like our wives to be better educated, to be able to discuss what’s happening in the world. We don’t all live for gossip, Annabelle.”

  The look she threw him spoke volumes, but he just smiled lazily at her. “And she mustn’t cost more than twenty-five guineas a year,” Annabelle continued. “Any more than that would be a criminal waste, for one child.”

  “Let’s have a few more, then, in the interests of domestic economy,” he jeered, and she left the room as quickly as was consonant with her dignity.

  In the end, most of these criteria were satisfied by a Miss Richards, daughter of a deceased clergyman – of the Established Church, of course. Annabelle considered Dissenters common and unfit to teach her daughter.

  Jeremy was not overly taken by the colourless Miss Richards, but agreed to give her a trial. And he had to admit that Marianne’s accent and general deportment did begin to improve and that she took a surprising fancy to the unprepossessing Miss Richards, as did Ellie, so he began to revise his opinion of the woman.

  In fact, the servants all approved of the new governess. She didn’t expect miracles of service from them and only put on a starchy act when the mistress was around. Miss Richards dined with the family when they were not entertaining, but had to dine in the nursery when there were guests, which made more work for the people below stairs, but her trays, which Annie took up to her, were very generously supplied and were carried up promptly and willingly, while the food was hot.

  Best of all, to Annie, was the way Miss Richards encouraged her and Ellie to read Miss Marianne’s books. The governess believed, she said, that everyone should be educated, whatever their station in life, though, she added hastily, she did not, of course, support the Chartists, whose demands were very unrealistic. Annie had heard much the same thing from Matt, though she knew that Sam Peters was very much in favour of universal suffrage for men and resented not having a vote. Annie didn’t have time to think about such things. She was too busy learning everything she could about gracious living and the ways of the gentry, not to mention sewing things for her bottom drawer.

  The only cloud on Annie’s horizon, and that a very minor one, was Fred Coxton, who had followed her along the street once or twice when she’d gone on errands for Mrs Lewis, though he’d made no attempt to do more than leer at her or make suggestive remarks. The sight of Fred, usually half-drunk, was starting to make her feel very nervous. He was a revolting man, dirty and hairy and strong as an ox. She did not mention these episodes to Matt, not wanting to cause any more trouble between the two men, who both worked for Hallam’s, but she still had occasional nightmares about the way Fred had grabbed her that day and the fact that none of the bystanders had come to her rescue.

  Matt told her, just before her seventeenth birthday, that Coxton had been fired for being drunk, so even that cloud disappeared from her horizon. Matt didn’t tell her that he was the one who had reported the man and that Fred had threatened to get even with him for it. He was, he decided, strong enough to be able to stand up for himself. No need to worry Annie about men’s affairs. But he worried about it sometimes himself.

  If Annie had known about Fred, she would have been terrified. Every time she went out she worried about meeting him. Somehow she could not get him out of her mind. He was such a horrible man.

  8

  June to August 1837

  In June of the following year, just after Annie’s seventeenth birthday, Mrs Lewis decided to go and visit her mother. She might, she said casually, also pay another little visit to her friend Barbara in Brighton.

  “I’ve been feeling a little down lately,” she told Jeremy. “I’m sure the sea air will do me good.”

  “Oh, yes?” He knew better than anyone that her health was always excellent.

  “Yes. Poor Barbara does get lonely, living on her own. She’s for ever begging me to stay with her again.” Annabelle fiddled around with her knife and fork, not meeting his eyes.

  “You must do as you see fit,” he told her. “You’ll be leaving Marianne here, I take it?”

  “Oh, yes. Miss Richards is most competent. And the child is rather young for all that travelling, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, she is!” he said firmly. “Besides, I should miss her.”

  “But you won’t miss me,” she said. “Oh, don’t bother to deny it, Jeremy. It’s been a long time since we even talked together.”

  The calm way she spoke showed how little she cared about this and stung him to say, “If we’re being honest for once, then I’d like to know why you ever married me in the first place. I’ve often wondered.”

  “Oh, the usual reasons,” she said lightly. “I thought I would be happy as the wife of a rising young doctor.”

  “And I didn’t rise – at least not in the way you expected,” he said thoughtfully. “I’m sorry for disappointing you in that.”

  “I believe you are.” Her voice was cool and impersonal, but at least it was not hostile.

  “I hope you enjoy your visit to Brighton, Annabelle. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t have an occasional trip, now that we have Miss Richards, whether you’re going to see your mother or not. I’ll let you have some extra money, of course.” A gleam of humour lit his eyes briefly. “I may not have risen to the top of my profession, but I do earn a reasonable living here in Bilsden.” He hesitated, then added, “Annabelle, is it too late to mend our relationship?”

  She was instantly on guard, her expression hostile. “If by that you mean that you wish to share my bed again, then my original threat still stands.”

  “Don’t you want other children? We need only – well, cater for that. I wouldn’t disturb you at other times.”

  “No! I won’t willingly ever share any man’s bed again! Nor will I have other children. You may have forgotten how ill I was when I was carrying Marianne. I never have. It’s the most painful, undignified process and I won’t go through it again. I thought I’d made that more than plain.”

  “Yet you’re still my wife, and I’d have the right to force you.”

  Her eyes narrowed and an ugly look came on to her face. “I would fight you every inch of the way and make sure that people knew what a monster you were.”

  He looked at her. She had lost any semblance of t
he soft femininity she normally cultivated and her innate shrewishness was very obvious. “It’s all right,” he said wearily. “I don’t find you that tempting! And I have no taste for rape.” That was the last time he ever tried to effect a reconciliation between them. “Go away and enjoy your holiday, Annabelle. Stay as long as you wish. Polite little tea-parties, strolls along the promenade – that’s all you’re fit for. You have ice in your veins, Annabelle!”

  She shrugged and bit her tongue, not wishing to antagonise him further for fear he might withdraw the offer of extra money. “I’ll plan to leave next week, then.”

  She watched him leave and heaved a sigh of relief as he closed the door of the room she insisted on calling her boudoir behind him. She hadn’t told him of her savings, the money she slipped away every week from the housekeeping allowance. Jeremy considered her indifferent towards him, but in reality she had much stronger feelings. She’d come to loathe him, both for exiling her from Brighton and for his silly obsession about helping the poor – at his family’s expense, she always felt. She knew very well that he did not charge those who couldn’t afford it, and that he gave away medicines free.

  Even Jeremy’s gentle voice irritated her nowadays. She liked a man to be more positive and masculine. Like Frederick Hallam, for instance. What wouldn’t she have done with a husband like that? He’d made a brilliant success of his life, building on his father’s achievements till he was a very wealthy man. But poor Frederick was, like her, hampered by his spouse. They had a lot in common, but not so much that he would persuade her to become his mistress. She was not that stupid.

  She had watched with interest the way Frederick had made himself the leading figure in the town, not just because he was a successful businessman, but also by sheer force of his personality. He was now a member of the town’s newly-formed corporation and was confidently spoken of as a future mayor. She wished Jeremy took a more positive interest in his civic duties, instead of for ever complaining about things like the water supply.

  When Jeremy did take part in a wider world, it was a world she could not share in any way. He made regular trips into Manchester, where a group of doctors indulged in the, to her, filthy practice of cutting up dead bodies. Why the Government had ever made that activity legal Annabelle could not understand. Jeremy insisted that he needed to know exactly what people were like inside if he were to treat them effectively when they were ill or had accidents, but Annabelle could not bear to have him even touch her with hands that did that sort of thing, however well scrubbed they were afterwards.

  Jeremy was also spending far too much money on equipment, like his new stethoscope Fancy listening to the vulgar noises bodies made inside! She had had to speak to him very sharply about encouraging Marianne to listen to other people’s hearts beating with the thing. Did he want the girl to turn into an unnatural ghoul whom no man would marry? And as for the packet of the new Congreves, for which he had paid the outrageous sum of one shilling, why, pray, did anyone need equipment to generate fire when there was always a fire burning in the kitchen or scullery grate? He was always buying such things. Toys, they were, expensive toys for idiots like Jeremy to waste good money on! Who knew what he would come home with next?

  Annabelle often sat in her boudoir and brooded over her future. She had no intention of enduring this exile from civilisation for ever. One day, when her mother was dead, she would have some money to come. With what she had saved from the housekeeping, it should be enough to allow her to leave Jeremy, leave Bilsden, leave all these dreary people. She would not say she was separated from her husband, of course, for that would seriously curtail her social life. Estranged wives were not well received in polite society. She would say that she had to live in Brighton for her health, that only in the sea air was she ever well. She had it all planned out and had already started dropping hints to her acquaintances in Bilsden. She doubted that Jeremy would ever contradict her about that.

  Unfortunately, Annabelle’s holiday plans were delayed a few weeks by the death of King William. She felt that it would show a lack of respect to travel for pleasure so soon after his death, and there was also the question of whether she should wear a black armband, or carry a black-edged handkerchief, not to mention whether national mourning would affect her shopping trip to London. Annabelle thought that it indicated a lack of regard for royal dignity to die sitting in a chair in the middle of the night, while as for a young girl of eighteen sitting on the throne of England, that, too, seemed absolutely wrong. And such an un-royal name, Victoria, so ugly. Her other name, Alexandrina, was much prettier.

  Three days before Mrs Lewis was due to leave, Mabel, who had been going to accompany her as a lady’s maid, fell and broke her arm when carrying some newly-laundered linen upstairs. The doctor set the arm and told her she was lucky; it was a clean break and should mend as good as new. Annabelle was furious. How on earth was she to manage without a maid? She couldn’t possibly travel on her own and she had no intention of looking after her own clothes. The other servants, recognising the danger signs, trod warily. It didn’t do to cross the mistress when she was in one of her rages. Poor Mabel was in hourly expectation of dismissal.

  When the bell rang for Annie in the kitchen the next morning, she cast a despairing glance at the cook. “Oh, Mrs Cosden! Whatever do you s’pose she wants?”

  “I don’t know, but it’ll make her worse if you keep her waiting. Here, give me that dirty apron and get a clean one off the hook. And tidy your hair, do!”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong, I’m sure I haven’t!” Annie worried as she changed her apron and smoothed her hair in the narrow mirror on the wall by the door.

  “Well, whoever said you had? Mercy me, stop talkin’ an’ get up them stairs! She’ll likely just want something fetching from the shops.”

  Annie dashed up the stairs, slowing down only as she approached the mistress’s boudoir.

  Mrs Lewis looked up from her writing desk as the maid entered. “Come over here, Annie,” she ordered coldly. “Stop! Turn round! Slowly! Let me look at you!”

  Puzzled, Annie obeyed. At least Mrs Lewis didn’t seem angry with her!

  “That dress won’t do! Haven’t you any better ones?”

  “Yes, ma’am, but I don’t change into them until the afternoons.” What was the mistress on about?

  “I’ll have to see them. And your other dress, the one you wear on your days off. Oh, and your outer garments. I can’t possibly travel to Brighton with a badly-dressed maid!”

  Annie’s heart skipped a beat. “I – I beg your pardon, ma’am?”

  “Oh, yes, I should have explained. You are to accompany me to Brighton and act as my personal maid. I cannot possibly travel alone, and I shall need someone to look after my clothes and do my hair. I’ve seen for myself that you’re very quick to learn and Mabel assures me that she can show you how to arrange some of the simpler hairstyles before we leave. Really! As if I hadn’t enough to do. It’s most inconvenient of Mabel to break her arm like this!”

  It didn’t occur to her to ask whether Annie wanted to become a lady’s maid and go to Brighton, any more than it occurred to Annie to question her orders.

  “Go and tell Cook that she must manage today with a bit of extra help from Ellie and Susan, then go and lay your clothes out on your bed. I shall be up to inspect them in ten minutes.”

  Head spinning, Annie dropped a curtsey and sped off to inform Mrs Cosden of the arrangements. On the way back up from the kitchen she bumped into the doctor. “Oh, sir, I’m sorry! I didn’t see you!”

  “You were miles away. What’s the matter?”

  “Mrs Lewis is taking me to Brighton with her!” Annie gasped, still overwhelmed by the prospect.

  “My goodness! That’s an honour! You’ll be able to see the sea and travel by mail.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Jeremy smiled. “It’ll do you good. Travelling is good for people. Broadens the mind. Teaches them things.”


  “I had expected to find you ready upstairs by now, Annie.” Mrs Lewis’s voice interrupted them, chill with disapproval.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am.” Annie dropped a curtsey and fled.

  “I do wish you wouldn’t gossip with the servants like that, Jeremy,” said Annabelle, once Annie was out of earshot. “They can’t spare the time, even if you can.”

  Jeremy’s lips tightened. “I stand rebuked. In future, I will content myself with merely paying their wages.” He went back to his surgery and banged the door behind him.

  Annie stood anxiously by the bed as Mrs Lewis examined her clothes. “You keep them very clean, I must admit,” she was told graciously, for Annabelle never vented her ill-temper on those from whom she needed a special effort. “The room, too. I like my servants to take a pride in themselves.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “However, you’ll need other clothes, if you are to be seen in my company. Put these away and come down to my dressing-room.”

  In the dressing-room Mabel, her face drawn with pain and one arm in a sling, was awkwardly pulling some clothes from the back of a cupboard.

  “It’s lucky that I’m a hoarder,” said Annabelle complacently. “I believe some of these can easily be altered to fit you. It’s a good thing you’re not as fat as Mabel.” She laid before the bemused Annie a black silk gown, old-fashioned in style, but with few signs of wear, and followed it by three other dark gowns, a petticoat or two and a travelling cloak.

  “We must call in the sewing-woman immediately,” she told Mabel. “She can alter these for Annie.” She turned to the girl. “You may keep the dresses afterwards if you prove satisfactory.” That would be more than enough reward, she thought, happy not to have to spend any of her precious money on recompensing Annie for the extra duties. Even the sewing-woman would charge only a few shillings for the alterations. “Now, we have to show you what I require. You may stay and help Mabel for the rest of the day and I shall come up early to dress for dinner – half an hour early, Mabel – so that you may practise doing my hair, Annie. I shall go downstairs now to tell Mrs Cosden and then to receive my callers.”