Lady's Maid

by Margaret Forster

  Things improved rapidly once they were in Paris, where they stayed three weeks. Mr Browning was very preoccupied with business affairs and there was much talk of financial embarrassment. Wilson was familiar with the tensions to which this gave rise – her mistress being unconcerned and disdainful, her master worried and intense. From her point of view, efforts at economy were always beneficial. It meant the Brownings stayed in and kept quiet and Pen was therefore more likely to follow a soothing routine. Amusing him in the daytime was easy. At every street corner, as she knew from before, there seemed to be a Punch and Judy show and she had a delightful rest of it, merely walking him there and holding his hand. As she watched over Pen, she day-dreamed about going home. It would be strange, with her old home gone. Mother had written that the house they had was ‘neat enough’ which had a reluctant ring to it and she could not in fact imagine going home to anywhere but the cottage where she had been born. Mother’s new house was a town house in a street, a different thing altogether, and as to Sheffield it meant nothing at all to her.

  ‘Are you glad to be going home, Wilson?’ her mistress asked her, the day before they were to leave, at the beginning of the last week in July.

  ‘I am, ma’am. Though I wish it was home.’

  ‘Is home a place, then?’

  ‘Partly. I was born in Newcastle and …’

  ‘… it will not mean the same to be with your family in Sheffield. Yes, I understand. But where your mother is, dear, is always your home.’ Mrs Browning sighed and took Wilson’s hand, in one of those tender, impulsive gestures for which she was forgiven so much. ‘I dread it, Wilson, dread London, dread my old home with its old sorrows. If it were not for seeing my sisters …’

  ‘Well, you will see them, and they will see Pen and that will be worth anything, you will see.’

  What Wilson saw instead, after three weeks in London, was that she had been wrong. No matter the unfeigned delight with which Miss Arabel greeted her sister, no matter that her brothers came round, no matter the admiration Pen aroused – none of it balanced the misery of being so near to her father, knowing she was still unforgiven. Day by day, Wilson felt the sadness grow in her mistress, saw her features droop, heard the cough begin. It was as though there was a shadow over everything and nothing would lift it. Visits to Wimpole Street were agonising in the unhappiness they aroused. ‘So near, Wilson, so near,’ her mistress murmured, intensely distressed every time they went in and out of the front door. Her room was now Miss Arabel’s and they stood in it almost awed by the flood of memories, and every time a door banged or a window rattled Mrs Browning clutched at her throat and her eyes grew wide with fear, even though she knew her father was safely in the City.

  Wilson herself found it difficult enough returning to No. 50 Wimpole Street and did not quite like to be there. She wondered how she could have been impressed by the house, finding it dark and dreary and not the grand, luxurious place she had thought on coming down from the North. She would never return to such a place, she was sure, nor belong once more to a servants’ hierarchy. Sitting with Minnie – a much-aged Minnie, whose leg was stiffer than ever and clearly pained her more – she was uneasy and ventured to suggest it might be as well if she did not come again for fear of offending Mr Barrett.

  ‘It is all nonsense. You are as bad as your mistress who frightens her child with tales of her father,’ Minnie said crossly to Wilson. ‘He is only a poor, unhappy man and she has the child himself thinking some monster comes here every night. It makes my blood boil.’

  The next day Wilson went, by train, to Sheffield, sorry to miss seeing Miss Henrietta and her baby son who were due to arrive from Somerset. There had been a strange scene before she left, a dialogue full of misunderstandings which she pondered for the first half of the journey. It seemed she had been expected to want to take Pen with her for the two-week holiday and that this was to be graciously granted to her, as a privilege. Shocked, she had turned down the suggestion, the assumption, with an emphasis which had surprised the Brownings only a little less than herself. There had been hurt looks, a coldness in the atmosphere, a distinct hint of accusation in the way Pen had been told. ‘Lily does not want you, darling.’ She had blushed furiously to hear it. Naturally, the child had screamed and clung to her and she had difficulty prising his arms from round her neck. He began to scream, ‘Lily stay! Lily stay!’ and it took all his father’s strength to take him from her. Remembering his piteous cries, tears came to her eyes and the countryside was blurred. She felt guilty at leaving her darling and then angry at her own guilt. Surely, she was entitled to two weeks with mother and Ellen and May without being made to feel somehow mean and unkind? ‘We would have thought you would wish to show Pen to your family,’ her mistress had said sorrowfully, ‘and had been disposed to bear the separation bravely for your sake, Wilson.’ This announcement had rendered her speechless in its hypocrisy. They had wanted her to take Pen for their own sakes, she was sure of it. Even with her there, in constant attendance, Pen was unhappy in the dismal rooms Miss Arabel had rented for them in Devonshire Street. He cried often and asked on the hour when they were going home. And now, with her gone, his plight would be infinitely worse. His mother had declared she would look after her son entirely on her own and really she did not understand the half of what that meant. Wilson wiped away her tears surreptitiously and smiled, not without a little malice, of which she was immediately ashamed.

  She arrived in Sheffield at six in the evening, a fine, sunny evening, though it would not have been thought much of in Florence. She was relieved to discover Sheffield was not, on first impression at least, the raging inferno she had anticipated but that it was surrounded by gentle green hills which gave it more of an air of the country than she had thought possible. Neither mother nor either of her sisters were at the station to meet her. It struck her, as she waited, how assured she had become since her last trip north when she had thought herself so supremely confident. Five years in Italy had given her a poise which transformed her and she was aware of it every time anyone glanced her way. She could never look haughty, nor did she wish to, but nor could she any longer look hesitant and ready to be cowed. She held her head high, as Italian women did, and had quite given up the modest lowering of the eyes which, in England, befitted her station. She was not of course bold or coquettish in her carriage but in the sweep of her skirt and the tilt of her hat she signalled a knowledge of the world which brought her respect. The station-master himself came into the waiting-room and doffed his hat, enquiring if he could be of service. When, after half an hour, none of her family had appeared, she asked him to order a cab for her. It was only when she gave the address, King’s Head Yard, that his expression changed from the respectful to one a great deal less deferential.

  Riding through Sheffield’s streets, the horses’ hoofs ringing on the cobbles, Wilson saw that the houses were becoming smaller and blacker and altogether less salubrious. Her mind flashed back to mother’s cottage in Fenham and her garden and the grounds of the big house which lay adjacent, and it was suddenly born in upon her what mother had suffered and how this suffering had not found its way into the pages of her letters. Not a word had escaped her of how dingy her new environment was nor had there been a single complaint as to the lack of a garden. When the cab pulled up at the end of a dark alley, she could no longer delude herself: mother had come down in the world. The cab driver would not leave Norfolk Street, saying she must make her own way into the alley and find the yard. She walked down it hesitantly, carrying her box with difficulty. She felt she was in a maze, a rabbit-run of dirty lanes with high brick walls on either side. She was perspiring freely before she came on the yard and the nine cottages mother had described. She knew she had been followed; women came from nowhere it seemed and stared. She stood at the door of the cottage she had identified as mother’s, and banged the knocker. Nobody answered. Uncertain, she went on standing there, wondering what she should do, but even then, in her distress, n
oticing how much greater her command was over herself. She did not break down, nor did her heart pound. She knew how to conduct herself and if, in another moment, the door did not open she would turn and address these leering women in terms they would understand.

  But even as she lifted her gloved hand – gloves bought in Paris and quite distinctive – there was a great shout of ‘Lily! Oh, Lily!’ and turning she saw running round the corner where two alleys met, her mother with her sisters following. They seemed to fly towards her, shawls billowing, skirts flapping, as she stood with her arms outstretched, the onlookers were silenced by the wave of emotion sweeping before the three running women. And then they were all together, in a huddle, and the door was opened somehow, and they all fell in, laughing and crying at the absurdity of it. Explanations flew through the air – how they had been kept past the proper hour, how they had raged, how they had been unable to do anything – and were ignored. ‘You’re here,’ Wilson kept saying, ‘you’re here, you’re here now.’ It seemed a long time before she looked at any of them properly, though even in the midst of the hugging and kissing it had registered that mother’s hair was now entirely white and that Ellen had become painfully thin. Mother brewed tea and there were knead cakes made and Wilson drank and ate and regaled them all with the fame of these same knead cakes throughout Florence and all the time she realised she was looking for Fanny. She began to cry, choking on her knead cake, and mother had no need to ask why. She wept too, and Fanny’s name was spoken and a lock of her hair produced, twisted into a ring inside a silver locket. Wilson hung the locket at once round her neck and felt comforted and was better able to ask all the questions crowding her head.

  By the time these were answered it was midnight and they were all weary. Mother blew out the lamp and raked the fire – the house was cold even on an August night – and they all went up to bed. Wilson dreaded being put in with mother and was embarrassed by this dread but May went in with mother and she slept with Ellen. The room was as tiny as the cubicle she occupied in Casa Guidi, with one bed in it and no room for anything else and as she undressed and laid her clothes carefully on the bedstead rail she thought longingly of the old bedroom at home with its cupboard and chest and the pear-tree outside the window. Then she was in with Ellen and though exhausted had another ordeal to overcome before there was any possibility of sleep. She knew she had to get Ellen to talk of her dead baby or leave a barrier between them and so she kissed her and said, ‘Tell me, Ellen,’ and without pretending she did not know what was meant, Ellen began to describe her baby and the horror of the still, blue-white face and her despair and they wept themselves to sleep.

  In the morning, everyone had gone. Wilson sat up in the strange bed and could not believe she had heard nothing. Dressing, she went downstairs into the cold back-kitchen and found a note hastily scribbled by mother. It said they could not miss work, not for anything, and that they would be back as soon after six as possible. Reading it, Wilson felt a stab of irritation – was she not worth taking a holiday for? – and then pulled herself up quickly. It was her mistress’s attitude which had brushed off on her, the attitude that did not take into account the needs of others. Would mother choose to work if she could be at home with her eldest daughter? Of course not. To doubt that was ridiculous. And then, looking round the kitchen, wandering round the cramped house, poking into the few drawers and cupboards, Wilson realised how poor mother had become. She appeared to have nothing except this doubtful roof over her head and yet she and May and Ellen worked long shop hours. Everything was as clean as it had always been, the fireplace was freshly black-leaded and the brass jug glittered as it always had done, but the house had no soul. In no time at all Wilson felt oppressed by it and longed to be out, but when she looked through the window at the slate-grey rain falling, all desire to wander the streets left her.

  But she did in fact stir herself to go out in the afternoon when the rain had all but stopped. She had no clue as to the lie of the land but stepped out boldly, resolved to go in the direction from which her family had come the day before. The street she came upon was called Fargate. It was as unlike a Florentine street as it was possible to imagine. She drew her cape about her and shivered as much from distaste as from the fresh easterly wind which had begun to blow. As she breasted the hill she struggled to silence the loathing she was beginning to feel for this place but then, when she saw ahead wave after wave of similar streets and houses and chimneys, she could not contain her horror. Her senses, so finely attuned in Italy to light and colour, so released by sun and warmth that they had blossomed and flourished, shrank from the sheer dreariness of what she saw. And in this, somewhere, mother and May and Ellen slaved away and were grateful that they were privileged to earn a living and inhabit a house. Slowly, a great resentment beginning to build up within her, Wilson carried on down the hill, without the least idea where she was going, numb with misery. She wanted to take mother back at once to the cottage, put her down among the people and life she knew, and have her once more treated with the respect due to her. There life had been hard but not barren. It was made rich through a hundred associations, made happy through knowing and being known in the area she had been born and brought up in. All that was swept away. The big house sold, the owners impervious to the fate of ‘good Mrs Wilson’ in her tied cottage. Had they even enquired for her? Had anyone belonging to them looked out for her? No. She had been served notice and that was that.

  Turning a corner uncertainly Wilson was splashed by a horse and cab going through a puddle. She shook her wet skirts in exasperation, annoyed to see the ugly black stains on her blue dress, and remembered just in time that she was no great lady to fly into a tantrum about a spoiled gown. Proceeding more slowly, she reflected she was no one at all, had no position of any value, whatever she might think and however she might look. She could do nothing for mother beyond give her the pathetically small amount of money she could spare. For the first time in her life she found herself wishing she were a man, with a man’s greater ability to earn. As a butler, she would have had money worth talking about and certainly enough to pay mother’s rent. It seemed to her that coming to Sheffield had only served to remind her of how useless she was, useless yet lucky. She was out of this. Whatever happened to her, she did not believe she could ever be doomed, as mother and May and Ellen were, to passing her days as they did. She was secure in the Browning household, she had a cherished place and always would have, she was protected from the harshness of true poverty and thanked God for it.

  Utterly lost, she came at last, though she knew not how, to the Market Place and the High Street where she saw a different Sheffield. There were several fine buildings and the shops on either side had windows full of fashionable clothes. The trade in and out of them was brisk, though her trained eye took in the general dowdiness of the customers. More settled, she inspected several of the shops, comparing them with those in London, and in James Burgin’s and Co., drapers, she bought a lace collar for mother’s dress. She would go back and fix it as a surprise for her return. In her box, which she had unpacked before she left and then repacked because there was nowhere to put anything, she had presents from Italy, but this lace collar would add a little extra to mother’s. She spent on it some of the five pounds Mr Browning had given her as a present before she left, five pounds she had nearly returned to him knowing, since the subject had been constantly mentioned, how hard pressed he was for cash. Taking the change, she almost laughed aloud at how stupid it would have been to be so carried away by the supposed poverty of her employers that she refused the only present of money they had ever made her. She would buy treats for tea with the rest: strawberries and cream and some honey and a joint of beef for Sunday dinner. There was no point in hoarding such a miserable amount with which nothing worthwhile could be done. Defiantly, she went about her purchases and was almost glad when every last penny was gone. The role of Lady Bountiful, she decided, did not suit her – it smacked too much of the kind of
charity mother had always been too proud to accept.

  She never did find the place where mother and her sisters worked. She asked for directions but was never given them. She even got up one morning resolved to accompany them, but they were all gone before she was ready. It was plain that for whatever reason, they did not wish her to visit the premises where they laboured such long hours. She tried questioning Ellen and met only with non-committal answers and her idea of what they all did and in what surroundings grew stranger every day. Mother said she worked ‘behind the shop’ but Wilson did not understand the term. She had in her head an old image of mother mixing herbs, pounding them in a pestle and mortar in their cottage kitchen, but knew that was not the right description of what she did now. In her letters, mother had made her tasks sound so pleasant but one look at her tired face at the end of a long day told a different story. Her hands told another. Wilson was shocked to see how stained they were, dull red up to the elbows and the nails yellow and the skin puckered. She scrubbed them fiercely every night but the colour never faded. She said only that Mr Conroy made his own perfumes and was experimenting with various natural dyes to colour them and that sometimes he was not successful in his ideas and the dyes were too strong. More alarming than anything to Wilson were the small burns running up the inside of mother’s arms. She pointed them out, with concern, but mother snatched her arms away and pulled down her sleeves and said she had been careless and spilt some of the hot glycerine and gelatine when pouring it into the moulds in the making of suppositories. Ellen helped her but sometimes also worked at the counter and complained constantly of the ache in her legs. The owner of the pharmacy worked there himself, though he had a stool to sit on when trade was slack, and she did not. She was not allowed to sit, not ever, and was continually reminded she had her place, a place more usually taken by a man and there were plenty of men wanting it, on sufferance. Ellen said being in the shop itself was a rest compared to her more usual task of preparing plasters which she hated. She mixed lead oxide and olive oil and water into a thick paste then spread it, with a special hot iron plaster, on pieces of sheepskin or swans-down. But at least Ellen, whatever she was doing, seemed to prefer her Sheffield work to being in service in Newcastle. She met people, she said, and was not forever hidden away and a shop assistant had more status than a kitchen maid.