Lady's Maid

by Margaret Forster

  ‘Thank you, sir, but I have just taken some and do very well as I am.’

  ‘Well, no matter. At least sit, I beg you, and let us be friends.’

  Wilson sat, though on the very edge of the chair positioned for her in front of the sofa where the Brownings sat together. Mr Browning looked at her directly, but with an attempt at a smile. ‘Now, Wilson, I am told you consider sixteen guineas insufficient for the duties you perform for us and I am sure you are right and that you are worth whatever the market price is. But we are not a market, we are a family and you, my dear, are a much valued member of it. All the members of a family, you will agree, can only benefit from the prosperity of the whole and if that whole is not too prosperous, why then the members all suffer. I am afraid you, as our servant, suffer as we do, in proportion to your position in this family, and there is at the moment little we can do about it beyond hold out the certain promise that should our circumstances improve financially, as I sincerely hope they will, you will be the first to know and to share in our increased fortune. Will that do, Wilson?’

  Wilson saw her mistress smile and pat her husband’s hand admiringly and all at once she was jolted out of the state of placid acceptance Mr Browning’s soothing and reasonable words had induced in her. ‘No, sir,’ she managed to say, though her voice would hardly bring out the words, ‘No, it will not do. I must have twenty guineas, as others do, or I am a fool and a poor one.’

  ‘I cannot believe this!’ her mistress gasped.

  ‘Hush, Ba,’ her husband said, and stood up. He paced the floor a little, thumbs in waistcoat pockets, and stopping in front of Wilson pulled up another chair and sat down very close to her. ‘Wilson, perhaps you do not understand – it is that we do not have twenty guineas a year to give you and that is the truth.’

  ‘Then I am sorry, sir.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘I must give in my notice.’

  And with that she got up immediately and left the room. Strangely, for she was well aware she had not won any kind of victory but rather the reverse, she felt a curious sense of triumph. She had spoken up, said what had been in her mind for many a year, and she had not failed, when challenged, to play what Lizzie had called her trump. And yet, as she put Pen to bed and he clung, as he always did, so very tightly to her, she began to see what she was doing in a different light. Where would she go and find such attachment, such unquestioning adoration? No other child except her own, a thing not looked for at the moment because there was so little chance of it, could ever mean to her what Pen Browning meant. Hadn’t she seen him born? Hadn’t she been the first, even before his mother, to hold him in her arms? And now, if she left, she would never find such an attachment again. Even if she went into a household with children the nurse and the governess would claim them. Sitting beside Pen as he lay chattering away, desperately staving off sleep, she never thought of winning, she never imagined the Brownings would pay her the four extra miserable guineas she wanted. She smiled slightly to herself and thought how well she knew them. It would be what they called ‘a matter of principle’ and not of poverty. When her mistress said she had thought she was paid in love that was a precise statement of her case – she really did believe the coinage of love was worth more than gold.

  Nothing was said that evening. They all three bade each other a polite goodnight. But in the morning Mr Browning spoke to her on his own and said, very gently, that they were obliged, with the greatest regret, to accept her notice because they were truly unable to meet her conditions. Wilson found herself blushing deeply as she replied in that case there was nothing for it but for her to go and find a place that would pay her the going wage to which she believed she was entitled and she noted his hesitancy, most unusual in the man. Emboldened by it, she said she hoped she could still take her holiday – and he said of course – and that she could expect a character reference, if she had given satisfaction in some respects. Mr Browning shook his head sorrowfully and said, ‘Wilson, Wilson,’ and that she surely had no need to ask. He would write a reference such as no servant would ever have been able to show and the only danger might be the impossibility of anyone believing in it. But for all these flattering words, Wilson felt the steel in him: he would not think of backing down but would let her go, however reluctantly. Eight years with all that had happened in it and she was not worth four guineas.

  Dressing her mistress that morning, she was unable to speak. Her throat felt closed with the effort of suppressing emotion and she was not even sure what emotion it was. Grief was there somewhere but also anger and a kind of shame. This last she dimly discerned but did not understand. She had nothing to be ashamed of but they made her feel she had, they acted as though she had done something shabby, as though she had let them down, and this she resented. Once the resentment had taken hold of her she began to be incapacitated. She dropped the hairbrush, found her fingers would not plait hair, and was incapable of selecting and picking up the right pins. Watching her unaccustomed fumbling, her mistress put a hand on her wrist and said, ‘Wilson, dear, will you not think again? We love you very much.’ If Pen had not at that minute staggered in bearing a purse he had found and if he had not succeeded in opening that purse and if a handful of guineas had not, to his delight, come tumbling out and rolled in all directions then she did not know what she might reply. But the purse did snap open and the guineas did roll and she was able to say, ‘I have thought enough, ma’am, and I must earn what I am worth while I am able.’

  She made no attempt, during the week that remained before her holiday was due, to look for another situation. She knew there were agencies with whom she could register and that The Times had column after column advertising for superior ladies’ maids, but she had no inclination to try to place herself. Perhaps she would find something in Sheffield though even as the thought went through her head she knew the idea horrified her and that she would have to be in a bad way indeed before it came to pass. But she had no energy to think. She felt spurned and humiliated and it was all she could do to drag herself through each day. That fleeting, delicious sense of triumph, because of bringing herself to the sticking point, had quite vanished. Instead, it seemed that the Brownings were triumphant. They did not flaunt it but it was there in subtle ways, in looks exchanged and heads held high. Only Pen was himself, telling her every day he loved, loved, loved her and would marry her when he was a man if he could not marry Mama.

  Lizzie, whom she visited almost every day, chided her for her dejection. ‘Come, Lily,’ she said, ‘you will feel better after your holiday and see you have done the best thing.’

  Wilson, nursing Lizzie’s youngest, a girl of fourteen months, said, ‘I don’t know as anything feels best, not when it will mean leaving Pen,’ and she hugged little Jane harder. ‘How he will manage without me I do not know and that is no boast. You do not know how it is with us, Lizzie, me having care of him since the hour he was born. He is like my own child, and such a curious child with more than normal needs. He took one look at the girl who was interviewed to be my replacement and screamed – he would have only his darling Lily, he said, and his Mama and Papa would not be his best friends any more if they sent Lily away. Well, of course they said with many a meaningful look at me, that they were not sending Lily away, it was Lily who wished to go, and then it was as though he had been struck and he hurled himself at me and really, Lizzie, I could not move an inch for the arms around my knees, the strength of the child, you would not believe it. And now every night he tries to make me promise never, never to leave him and sometimes to get him to sleep at last I confess I half-promise though whether he understands it is only a half-promise I do not know.’ Lizzie listened and clucked her tongue sympathetically and urged her to be strong but she felt far from strong. The distress and bewilderment crept into every corner of her being and she longed for some solution.

  It came unexpectedly and in such a roundabout way she was never sure she had read the signals correctly. There had been a su
ccession of girls interviewed, each proving worse than the last. Wilson had shown some of them in and could not believe such slatterns and silly misses were getting past the door.

  ‘Personal recommendation is the only way, Robert,’ she heard her mistress say with a sigh.

  Her husband appeared irritated. ‘The point is, Ba,’ he said impatiently, ‘you will not get a nurse if you request a lady’s maid and vice-versa. The issue is ridiculously confused and ought to be cleared up – what is it we want, nurse for Pen or maid for you?’

  ‘Wilson,’ his wife said simply. ‘What we want is Wilson.’

  Then the door closed and she could hear no more. But immediately afterwards, when she went in to take the tea things, Mrs Browning said, ‘I believe you have not had your new dress, Wilson, and indeed you ought to have it for your holiday. It is too late to have it made so you must go and buy yourself something pretty, dear. I have been remiss in not mentioning it before.’

  Wilson, in spite of the smile on her mistress’s face, felt wary. She had had the two summer dresses she was entitled to, both made in Paris that spring. Her mistress could not have forgotten since they had bought the material together and there had been much discussion on the relevant merits of a cream poplin and a rose-tinted cotton. So what was this? Slowly, she looked at, but did not take, the two guineas lying on the table, put there this moment by their owner. ‘I have had my summer dresses, ma’am, if you remember. This is one and the other, the pink, for best.’ It crossed her mind that she had been subjected to a test of honesty but this was dismissed when her mistress quickly said, ‘No, I had not forgotten, nor did I think you had, but two dresses are not enough these days with Pen ruining them for you. I should like you to have another summer dress and another winter from now on, though of course you will not be staying.’ And at that Mrs Browning’s face fell.

  ‘I would not stay for more dresses, ma’am,’ Wilson said, tight-lipped, ‘for indeed dresses mean little to me. If I stayed it would be because I would not leave when a certain person needs me so.’

  But afterwards, Wilson found herself wondering if she had missed a subtle shift of ground. What was being offered in the guise of dresses? A compromise? A way out? And she had foolishly rejected it. Money had been offered for a dress but who was to comment if no dress materialised and the money taken? She had only to say, in the unlikely event of being challenged, that she had not yet found what she wanted and meanwhile the sovereigns could go to mother. It would be a cheat and she still would not appear to win but she would know, and her employers would know, that she had. So that same day she took a deep breath and said, in the evening, as she prepared her mistress for bed, ‘I beg your pardon, ma’am, but after all I think you are right about the dress. I have only just now discovered a tear in this skirt which Pen made with a branch he would wave in the park and I think I had better accept the money for another dress in lieu and it would be very kind to increase my clothes allowance by four guineas a year.’ The joy on Mrs Browning’s face as she whirled around could not have been feigned. ‘Oh Wilson, dear!’ she cried, ‘then you will stay? These misunderstandings are over? Oh, Wilson, I cannot tell you how relieved I am. How I have hated every last one of those daring to think they could replace you. Never, never, let us go through that again. And now Pen will be happy for you know yourself he has suspected the worst and been inconsolable.’

  But Pen was not happy just then, for of course it was time for Wilson to go on holiday and he had to be told. His mother tried to placate the screams by saying she would look after him herself, morning, noon and night, and he need fear no strangers. Wilson herself was more adept. ‘Do you want Lily to come back from her mother’s to you?’ she asked, and when assured this was the case told him, ‘Then be brave and trust her and she will come back, but if you scream and do not believe your Lily then she will not want to leave her mother and come home to such a boy.’ Pen was instantly silent, only snuggling up to her and putting his thumb in his mouth. ‘I will go on my holiday and then I will come home and we will go back to Italy,’ she promised, returning into her own persona. Then it was endless cuddles and kisses and finally he fell asleep in her arms, his blond curls still damp with the fever of alarm he had worked himself into. Knowing it was the only way to save him further anguish, Wilson crept out of the house as soon as she had laid the child in his cot and Billy Treherne kindly took her to the station. ‘Beaten, eh?’ he said to her, but smiled and without waiting for a reply said, ‘The Barretts are hard to leave, Lily, and don’t I know it. I near enough never thought I’d get Lizzie out.’

  ‘It is not a case of the Barretts,’ Wilson replied, a little stiffly, for she was never quite at ease with Billy. ‘It’s the child that holds me. Every day I am gone he will weep for me and that is no lie.’

  Nevertheless, she stayed three and not two weeks in Sheffield, though she knew it prolonged Pen’s agony and was sorry for it. As soon as she arrived at that dismal little back-street house she sensed a difference in the atmosphere, a lightening of the exhaustion which had filled it the year before. On the surface, nothing had changed. It was still claustrophobic and poorly furnished, the cold was still intense for all it was summer and the whole place as dark as a coal-hole with a smell of damp which nothing mother could do would lift. But the inhabitants were different, markedly so. There were smiles on all three faces and smiles deeper than those of welcome. There was a relief and happiness present and Wilson soon knew why: both May and Ellen were to be married. They hardly knew how to tell her and it was hard to say who was more excited. May’s, as might be expected, was the better match. The young doctor had proposed and been accepted and the marriage was to take place in six months when he had established himself in his uncle’s practice. There would be a house to live in, a very pleasant house on the outskirts of the city with a garden for mother who would of course go with May. Mother cried when she told Wilson, in private, how Dr Burnham was everything she could have wished for May – kind, gentle, clever and above all a gentleman.

  But it was Ellen’s match that startled. Ellen was to marry that very month and it was to be at the wedding that Wilson stayed her third week, writing:

  — I am sorry, ma’am, to prolong my visit, but you will understand that it would be a cruel thing to miss my sister’s wedding by a few days only when the likelihood is I may not see her for years and having sisters yourself and knowing too of Ellen’s history you will sympathise with my desire I trust. It is all a great surprise and it was not until I had spoken with my mother that I was assured all was well. Ellen’s husband-to-be is a widower and a farmer from East Retford a village near Sheffield. He was in Sheffield in the spring to bring his two small children to his sister’s after the death of his wife and while here came to the pharmacy where my sister works and made her acquaintance while buying pills for his younger child who was afflicted with a skin disease. He is forty years of age but my mother says in no way elderly but instead a fine, strong man, very blunt and direct. It is true she says that in appearance he is not unlike Albert Cole, who caused Ellen her former misfortune, but that there the resemblance ends for he has been in all ways honourable speaking first to my mother of his intentions before proceeding to divulge them to Ellen. Mother says he was frank, confessing he had sore need of a wife and that this had been in his mind ever since he came to Sheffield but that he would not take anyone since he judged a marriage without genuine affection and regard worse than useless. He said Ellen’s modesty and simplicity had impressed him and that he liked her concern for the child she did not even know, this being his sick child for whom he collected the pills. Mother was afraid Ellen would scorn the offer though it was a good one and none better likely to come and was determined not to press her. But Ellen was at first thunderstruck not having thought herself worthy of any man’s attention for a long time and then delighted because she had noticed and liked Mr Wilson as he is called. This coincidence of the surname being the same as ours, though it is a common e
nough name, struck us all as propitious though I do not rightly know why. At any rate, Ellen accepted and they marry this Tuesday week and leave for East Retford the next day. All is bustle and confusion as you may imagine and we are determined to give Ellen the best wedding we can.

  It was not after all a very splendid wedding but Wilson saw that Ellen hardly noticed its deficiencies. She was quite transformed by her luck, or what she saw as her luck, and had regained the old cheerfulness which had been her only real asset. She laughed again, that irritating giggle which irritated no longer, and her smile banished the haggard lines on her face (except for the crease of misery between her brows which was too ingrained ever to lift). Naturally, there was a new dress called for and Wilson made it, buying the material with the dress-money Mrs Browning had given her for herself. She firmly guided Ellen towards a blue stripe and away from a sprigged yellow which made her look jaundiced and was far too young for her. In the matter of hair she was authoritative, insisting Ellen’s lank locks should be braided into a French plait, the very style she had once cursed for the difficulty it caused her but which she now approved above all others and could turn out like the best hairdressers in Paris. Mother had a pearl brooch and a pair of earrings and when these were worn Ellen suddenly looked elegant and her homeliness was for the moment banished. She made a very touching bride, sweet in her simplicity, affecting because she was demure and yet so clearly eager.