Lady's Maid

by Margaret Forster

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘Please tell my daughter Mr Elliotson will attend at 3 pm.’

  ‘Tomorrow, sir?’

  ‘That is what I said.’

  ‘Tomorrow is – ’

  ‘Tuesday. And on a Tuesday you were about to say my daughter has a visitor, the man of the pomegranates, the poet. I am aware of that. She has time to inform Mr Browning his visit is impossible.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Still she stood there. Still Mr Barrett kept her there. She wondered what else he had to say.

  ‘You would go with your mistress abroad, would you, Wilson?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And are you hoping to go abroad?’

  ‘Whatever my mistress wishes, sir.’

  ‘That is commendable. You may yet be put to the test, though at my behest and not hers. You may go.’

  Wilson went, perturbed by the emphasis with which he had spoken of a test, rather than by the words themselves. There was nothing she had said which she regretted yet she felt that in some indefinable way she had failed her mistress. She had not spoken strongly and ought to have done so and the master had sensed this. It was a comfort to write to Timothy:

  — how caught I feel my dearest Timothy for in truth I am confused and hardly know my own mind. My mistress plays a game of her own with stealth, and I am not privy to the rules. But I fear my mistress has lost the game and we rest here and I envy you your travels with Mr Kenyon. So now I suppose it is goodbye for the winter if, as you intimate, you are to leave this next Sunday and I wish you well and would appreciate news of you before too long and I will write from time to time if you have an address to hand though I will be starved of news to match yours. I cannot say I relish the thought of winter any more than my mistress though I do not suffer as she does with the lungs. I miss our walks in the park and to give you satisfaction I must confess I miss you too in a manner of speaking not having any other such good friend —

  The minute she had written that, Wilson felt she had betrayed Lizzie Treherne, to whom she could tell even more than to Timothy. Lizzie knew all about the yearning to go abroad and had kept pace with the growing passion to be where Mr Browning was. ‘It was the same with Mr Boyd the blind scholar who was her teacher in Hope End days,’ Lizzie vowed. ‘Ask Minnie, and she will tell you how, when the family had to leave Hope End, Miss Elizabeth wished only to go to Bath where Mr Boyd was. But you must not let her distress and agitation pull you down, Lily, or there will be no end to the misery. Once she has resigned herself to not going anywhere she will settle and all will be well, you will see. It is no good making yourself ill over it as I see you do. Keep calm and cheerful and rise above all the plannings and mutterings in that house or you will go mad.’

  Lizzie was right and Wilson knew it. She tried to detach herself, though distraction was hard to find without Timothy. She walked in the park feeling sulky and was bad tempered with Flush when he would not stop straining on the leash. Mr Elliotson had been quite different from Dr Chambers. A thin, gaunt man who moved in short, jerky steps, as though on the balls of his feet, he had not applied the stethoscope. He had felt Miss Elizabeth’s pulse, talking all the while of the importance of good food, and felt her forehead and looked at her tongue and asked three times as many questions as Dr Chambers had done, most of them about the state of his patient’s bowels. Wilson, who was well acquainted with her mistress’s condition, was yet again surprised at some of her answers but would have been too nervous to contest them even if she had not been too embarrassed. If the doctor had talked to her he might have heard a different story, one of almost constant constipation and mighty efforts to relieve it. She had prevailed upon Miss Elizabeth to try another of mother’s cures with some success, one in which small green walnuts were placed in salt and water for nine days then sieved and left until turned black when she put them in a jug and poured boiling water on them. Her mistress had vowed the water enclosing them looked poisonous but had agreed to sip some of it after it had been boiled and appeared more of a syrup. Her bowels had at least opened partially the next day but she would take no more of the walnut water though Wilson assured her that with brandy added the mixture lasted years. The constipation continued but the doctor was not told. He would have heard too how that regular health of which Miss Elizabeth was so proud was now very irregular and caused concern. She was not concerned but Miss Elizabeth was, waiting each month with anxiety for evidence that she was a normal, healthy woman. Wilson could not understand the fuss nor see such a nuisance, one she herself found a dreary inconvenience, as significant. If Miss Elizabeth were married, it would be different but since she was not the absence of her ‘regular health’ hardly mattered. Let Tilly grow white faced with terror every now and again, having good cause, but not Miss Elizabeth surely.

  Wilson knew, as she wandered in the park, keeping her eye on the clouds, that part of her restlessness was to do with her birthday. Tomorrow, September 14th, she would be twenty-five. A quarter of a century, and what to show for it? A good dress on her back, a few savings under her bed in the tin box with Miss Elizabeth’s poetry, a safe and secure job, but no home of her own, no husband, no children, no forseeable future other than work and work again. London had made her discontented – no, she corrected that in her mind as she corrected the direction in which Flush was heading. It had not made her discontented so much as more aware. In Newcastle, her expectations had been so low. Now, thanks partly to Timothy, and partly to Miss Elizabeth, she thought of things that had never crossed her mind before. She was ashamed at how covetous she was becoming, an unpleasant trait she had never thought to see in herself and one which mother had frowned upon in others. She worked hard and had so little. It had once angered her to hear from that dreadful Jane, Miss Mitford’s maid, that Miss Elizabeth had referred to her as ‘desperately dear’ at sixteen guineas a year. She had not, of course, let Jane see her fury but it had lain within her all this time and was only now beginning to boil over. Did Miss Elizabeth realise how little sixteen guineas was? She tried to save half each week but it could not be done without a self-denial so demanding it made her wretched. She could walk in the park for free but precious little else. To go to a play with Minnie was a rare treat but she relished it and would not give it up. And she liked pretty things, had more taste for them than she had ever supposed, so Oxford Street, near and tempting, made her still more discontented. Miss Elizabeth bought her two dresses a year but everything else she had to find for herself and London was full of delectable boots and hats and gloves. She bought a pair of shoes as a birthday present to herself which cost six whole shillings – such exquisite shoes of a leather so soft and fine they caressed her feet when she put them on and were quite irresistible. But she knew she ought to have resisted them since at six shillings they fell only a shilling short of her weekly wage. It was wicked, sinful – but such shoes were too great a temptation.

  At chapel, the minister preached regularly against the sins of pride and vanity, so much so that she often thought he had her in mind – for, having bought the shoes, had she not been daydreaming of a sprigged muslin she longed to buy but for which she knew she had no use? It was a beautiful blue and brought out the colour of her eyes famously: lately she had come to realise her eyes were her best feature and should be made more of. It was silly to wear grey and black and brown when those neutral shades only made her more insignificant than she already was, whereas a deep, sky blue worn near her face brought up her eyes and made her almost pretty. Mr Henry had said as much, not that she set any store by what that young man said and not that he had dared to be impertinent. It was only that as she was coming out of Miss Elizabeth’s room once and he was going in he had jumped back as though startled and claimed not to recognise her ‘because you look so different, Wilson, in that blue blouse’. One or two of the servants had made remarks about a follower being surely in the running but she had put a stop to that sharply. She had no follower, nor wanted none and she wou
ld thank them to remember that. Minnie, who had guessed the truth about Timothy, saw to it that no one else made the same mistake again.

  Turning back for home, Wilson tried to be honest with herself. She was, she dared to think, as sensitive to atmosphere as her mistress, who had often herself commented on this. ‘Ah, Wilson, what do we suspect?’ she would often say when a visitor had left and they would discuss together whether some member of the family was or was not pretending to be happy when both of them could feel the depression or anxiety seeping through. They had each only to look at a face to feel they knew the mood of the person behind it and prided themselves on their perception. And now Wilson confessed to herself that what was really troubling her was neither her age nor the failure of the plan to winter abroad but something both deeper and more subtle. It was all to do with the change in her mistress and that change was all to do with Mr Browning. When she took his letters in these days Miss Elizabeth seemed to vibrate, to grow vivacious without saying a word, to become altogether lighter and warmer. The old languor would pass and in the instant that the precious letter was put into her hand a cloud lifted from her. The letter would be pressed to her heart, even to her lips, and her smile was not simply of pleasure but of rapture. When she was writing her reply, Wilson was now sent out of the room and her last glimpse of her mistress showed her to be totally absorbed, head bent protectively over her paper, her left arm shielding it. Closing the door, Wilson felt excluded and also, she realised, envious.

  This unseemly envy persisted and grew more troublesome before and after Mr Browning’s visits. Wilson found the eagerness, the open hunger, with which Miss Elizabeth now waited for Mr Browning almost unbearable. At first, she had smiled to herself and been happy for her mistress, even worried anxiously that she showed too much need, but recently, since the failure of the plan to go abroad, the evidence that Miss Elizabeth yearned so for her Tuesday visitor had begun to unnerve her. It made her feel cold and lonely to witness such emotion. Was this how she should have felt about Timothy? How she should feel now? And then, when she showed Mr Browning in, the alacrity, the confidence, with which he crossed the floor and the joy in her voice when she returned his greeting, were all too much. Bitterly she reproached herself for that pang of jealousy and reminded herself over and over again of how she had hoped and prayed just such a happiness would come the way of poor Miss Elizabeth. But now that it had, her delight was tempered by this wretched envy. She saw quite clearly that here was love in all its simple splendour. Flush saw it too, and hated it. Hearing frenzied barking the week before, while Mr Browning was there, she had gone down to Miss Elizabeth’s room to take the dog out and one look at both their faces had told her what had caused Flush to bark. Unless she was very much mistaken, Mr Browning had kissed or at least embraced Miss Elizabeth. For no other reason, except a bodily contact he would not permit, would Flush bark so. Miss Elizabeth, asking her to remove the dog and banish him once more to the yard on Tuesday afternoons, told all in her averted downward gaze and Mr Browning, fidgeting with his collar, was no less revealing. Wilson thought she ought to smile at their innocence but instead was particularly grave.

  Lizzie, told the tale, had thrilled to it but could hardly believe it. During the following weeks as Wilson made the walk to the Trehernes’ her highlight of the week, Lizzie became bound to acknowledge that she was right and a love affair was in progress. ‘She has said nothing,’ Wilson always reminded Lizzie, ‘nothing direct at all.’

  ‘But that is how it would be,’ said Lizzie. ‘She is afraid it cannot be true and dare not trust that it is.’ Wilson nodded, though mildly annoyed at having to give Lizzie credit for divining anything at all now that she was the expert herself. But, expert or not, when Lizzie asked, ‘Where will it end?’ she could not answer. ‘Where do such things usually end?’ she replied with the lift of an eyebrow and they both looked at each other and then laughed a little at their own relish. ‘Ah well,’ Lizzie said, groaning at the weight of the second child she was carrying and stretching her back where it pained her, ‘then we will see. Maybe it is a year for wedding bells and soon she will be in the state I am in now.’ Wilson could not imagine it, looking at Lizzie’s vast size – the baby was due on Christmas Day – she found it quite impossible to envisage Miss Elizabeth swollen with child. Contemplating this, she found it equally impossible to imagine her in bed with a man and blushed as such an image flashed briefly through her mind. What was happening to her that she could indulge in such gross speculation? There was speculation too, in December, about Miss Henrietta’s future. Crossing the hall one day, Wilson came on Surtees Cook folding Miss Henrietta in his arms. She broke away and cried, ‘Captain Cook has been promoted, only think!’ Wilson gave a little bob, embarrassed now to be caught with a tray like any common scullery maid but Miss Henrietta was so flushed with pleasure she noticed nothing. ‘I cannot stay, even if I were welcome,’ Captain Cook was saying. ‘I only came that you should be the first to hear before it appears in the Gazette.’ As Wilson went down the last flight of stairs she heard Miss Henrietta clap her hands and then the door opening and shutting.

  Minnie Robinson, of course, knew all about Captain Cook’s promotion so did everyone below stairs, where Tilly was speculating heavily. ‘Now they’ll get married for sure,’ she breathed, eyes bright with excitement as she conjured up visions of the fun a wedding in the house would be. ‘Don’t talk nonsense, Tilly,’ snapped Minnie, ‘we’ll have no silly talk of weddings if you please.’ Afterwards she told Wilson she doubted if any promotion of Captain Cook would make the slightest bit of difference to Miss Henrietta’s marriage prospects. ‘The master is set against all weddings,’ she said, ‘no matter who the suitor, he don’t hold with them. And poor Miss Henrietta hasn’t a penny to her name, nor has my Miss Arabel. ’Tis only Miss Elizabeth got the legacies from her grandmother and her uncle and it is no use to her either. ’Tisn’t fair, never was, but there you are, when are these things ever fair and there’s nothing can be done about it.’

  Next day, Miss Elizabeth herself said much the same. She showed Wilson the two lines announcing Captain Cook’s promotion but sighed as she did so. ‘I fear dear Henrietta exaggerates the effect of it,’ she said, ‘but it is very little more money, certainly not sufficient to marry on, Papa would say. Money should not have anything to do with marriage, or that is what I believe, but when it comes to the managing of it, why then Papa’s viewpoint has some strength. If Henrietta had but a hundred or so of her own all might be different, but she has not.’ Wilson, sensing her mistress’s distress, folded the newspaper with even greater gentleness than usual and placed it on the table. ‘Have you seen him, Wilson?’ her mistress suddenly asked.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Is he very fine?’

  ‘He is tall, ma’am, and well built and looks splendid in his uniform.’

  ‘So Henrietta says, how she does love his regimentals. But is he handsome Wilson? Would you say?’

  Wilson hesitated. Here was another instance when she was caught by her inability to be ready with the quick meaningless response. ‘He has a kind face, ma’am, very kind, and gentle too, but he is not what I would call rightly handsome, as I think you mean.’

  ‘Well, that is good to hear. I like kindness and gentleness in a man better than good looks. I should not have liked to hear you say Captain Cook was full of bluster, a swaggering soldier who preened himself.’

  ‘Indeed no, ma’am.’

  ‘Henrietta longs to present Captain Cook for my inspection but I could not bear it.’

  Wilson still could not bring herself to ask direct questions however much her mistress encouraged her to break with formality and do so. All she could manage was, ‘He is a fine gentleman, ma’am, and I am sure would be glad to meet you.’

  ‘Oh, I have no doubt of that, but then think what might come of it, think of the position I might find myself in should anything transpire.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, ma’am?’<
br />
  ‘With Papa, Wilson. It is best that I do not know and have never spoken to Captain Cook, do you see?’ Wilson did.

  She had told her mistress that Lizzie was expecting again and the reply had been ‘poor woman’. Wilson had felt indignant about this. Why ‘poor woman’ when little Mary was nearly eighteen months old? It was a decent interval, more than many a woman had, and the new baby was wanted and welcome though Lizzie had been heard to say she hoped that would be an end to it, God willing.

  When Lizzie was brought to bed of a boy ten days late and Miss Elizabeth was told, she asked if Wilson had seen the baby and when assured only briefly, and this said with a casual air, she seemed relieved. No further questions were asked about Lizzie’s son and she had no idea Wilson had walked to Bayham Street almost every day where it was perfectly true she hardly saw the baby but saw a great deal of Mary whose nurse she almost became. Every afternoon she and Flush took the little girl out and Lizzie slept. The weather, which had been mild all winter was still fine, with neither snow nor ice on the ground and a complete absence of cutting east winds. Watching Mary stagger along the paths in Regent’s Park, Wilson felt a great longing to have just such a cheerful little creature of her own. She picked Mary up when the child grew tired. All the way back to Bayham Street Wilson breathed in the curious scent of Mary’s cheeks and hair and felt her warmth and, though the weight seemed heavier with each step and Flush’s lead became tangled she was sorry to reach the child’s home. Who could resist the task of peeling off Mary’s mittens to reveal the fat, dimpled hands or pulling off her boots, of which she was so proud, and rubbing the stockinged toes to warm them? There was nothing, Wilson felt, that she would not do for a child.

  She was silent that day when she returned to Wimpole Street and performed all her duties mechanically but Miss Elizabeth made no comment. When once she would have asked if anything was amiss she now seemed not to notice Wilson’s existence. She was in a trance half the time, constantly pausing in the middle of writing or reading to stare into space, a half-smile on her lips. Wilson would ask her once, twice, even thrice if she was ready to take coffee or have her hair brushed and there would be no answer. On Wednesdays, the day after Mr Browning’s visits, she was particularly removed from all every day concerns and sometimes did not speak at all. Minnie shuddered when Wilson commented on this and vowed there was danger in the air and it would all end badly. She was even more convinced of this when Wilson reported that Mr Barrett no longer came to his daughter’s room to pray with her before bed. ‘What a deal has changed in a year,’ said Minnie.