Lady's Maid

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by Margaret Forster


  None of this had any effect. No sooner had they entered the drawing room, where the Brownings sat together on a sofa with Pen expectant between them, than Ferdinando was off, rushing forward with his son and demonstrating his prowess. Wilson stood back, all the time watching the Brownings’ faces carefully. Mr Browning seemed merely amused but on her mistress’s face was a peculiar expression she could not fathom. It was as though she were deliberately holding herself back from the admiration required, distancing herself from involvement with the baby. When Oreste, urged on by his father, put out a hand and touched her knee she seemed to flinch even though she took it. Pen had no such inhibitions – he was Oreste’s slave and Wilson saw his adoration might prove her strongest hope. He lay on his back and begged the baby to sit on him and offered his curls to be pulled and his face to be licked, all the time calling on his parents to watch. Here at last was the little brother he had begged for.

  Perhaps that was it. Perhaps, Wilson thought afterwards, it was Pen who unwittingly did the damage by calling attention to his mother’s failure to bear another child, by reminding her that her child-bearing days were over. Perhaps she could not stand the thought of a baby in the house. Whatever it was, after Oreste had been taken back to Lizzie’s by his reluctant father, Mrs Browning said to her, ‘He is a fine child, Wilson. You will miss him if you are resolved to come with us.’ It was like a death-knell, no mistake in the message of doom. ‘I am resolved, ma’am,’ Wilson replied calmly, ‘quite resolved.’

  Chapter Twenty Four

  THERE WERE TIMES in the next few weeks when Wilson found herself wondering if she had ever married or borne a child, times when she felt herself to have slipped so effortlessly back into her old life that her new status as wife and mother had no reality. The momentum of each day was so compulsive she was simply carried along with it and only at night, with Pen often in her arms, did she feel disturbed. Then she would slip out of bed, taking care not to waken Pen, and, lighting a candle, write to Ellen even though she had little hope of a reply. She listed things she wanted to know about Oreste and begged Ellen to reply:

  — if you do not Ellen I will become a prey to all kinds of evil fancies which will return to plague me at night. I see my darling’s face before me so soon as I close my eyes and sometimes he cries which makes me imagine something bad may have happened. Ellen you are to tell me if it has for otherwise I would not know since Ferdinando cannot tell me being unable to write. And I cannot write to him because there is no one to read the Italian. We are in a sorry fix situated thus and I am dependent on Lizzie Treherne for news of him. She writes Ferdinando is sad and gloomy and in way of despairing separated as he is from both wife and child and hardly knowing which is worse. I am well enough here and have much to keep me occupied, so my thoughts do not stray too much until nightfall. Pen has been in a state of great excitement since his uncles have been here. They declared their nephew was in need of some toughening up and though his mother’s protestations were loud they have been teaching him to defend himself. It is comical to watch. He stands with his little legs apart as they have instructed and squares his fists quite red in the face with determination and when Mr Octavius makes a swing at him but you may be sure only in pretence the little lad darts in and hits his uncle on the nose and we all clap. His mother calling him to her said she did not like to see her baby so warlike he puts his hands on his hips and declares, ‘I am not a baby, Mama, I am a man and men must fight’. She pretended to be distressed but her pride was evident. Certain it is that the child gives her all the pleasure she has in life at this time for otherwise she is low what with a cough as of old and the fear her cousin Mr Kenyon may die at any moment. We are to go to Cowes which is in another part of this island tomorrow to see him and she is dreading it as we all are. I have been warned to keep Pen very quiet, which will be no easy matter after the frolics of this last two weeks. Then we are to journey to Somerset to Miss Henrietta’s home and I beg you Ellen send me news of my child there to await me. I enclose a money order which I hope to do each time I write.

  That had been the agreement: Oreste would be looked after by Ellen and William but maintained by his mother and father. It was a point of honour and one dictated by Wilson, not Ellen, who protested she had no need of money. Oreste would cost nothing to keep as yet. But Wilson had felt instinctively that a business transaction, though it might appear soulless, would strike a bargain more effectively. She did not want her sister to perform an act of charity which might lead her to feel she owned her nephew, that he was hers because of what she had lavished on him. He was merely to be a boarder – that way the contract would be terminated more easily. She had stressed over and over that Oreste would be collected and brought out to Italy just as soon as it could be arranged. This might be a matter of weeks, or of months but it would happen. Ellen had nodded and William grunted agreement but Wilson knew neither of them had listened properly – all they wanted was to have the child back. It made it in one way easier to leave him, seeing him so adored and cossetted, but a deep disquiet accompanied her back to London and she was short with Ferdinando who did nothing but weep. Was anything worth such a separation? Wearily, she had asked the question of herself repeatedly and was half ashamed at the speed of her answer: yes, it was worth it to escape East Retford, to return to Italy, to make something of her marriage.

  At all times she was careful to be cheerful, as she had seen she must be. No one caught her moping, no one could have known she was pining for husband and son. She smiled rather more than she had ever done and when it was noted and commented on said she was happy to be back. This was accepted as the truth without her mistress probing deeper. Writing to Lizzie, Wilson could not help remarking:

  — no one cares Lizzie how I feel and I am glad of it for were I to be shown any sympathy I fear I should not be able to compose myself. But they are wrapped in their own affairs and see only that I perform my old duties as well as ever. Upon occasion Pen has caught me sad and has begged to be told why his Lily does not laugh and then I have to work hard to persuade him he is mistaken for if his mother thought I in any way brought sorrow into her beloved son’s life then all would be over with me. As it is we have reached the happy stage of my mistress declaring she does not know how she stood that Harriet so long and she no longer hides her belief in my superiority.

  At Cowes, Wilson had need of all her patience, since the situation there was even more desperate than had been suspected. The house where Mr Kenyon struggled to overcome the pain of his cancer was utterly silent and gloomy and terrified Pen, so she spent each day walking with him along the quiet roads seeking distraction in reaching the sea and watching the boats. For all the amusement this lively scene afforded him, the child could not leave the subject of Mr Kenyon and his suffering alone. Again and again he asked if Mr Kenyon was going to God soon and whether he was happy that he would soon be an angel and whether he could be asked to take a message to Joe Story.

  It was a dreadful atmosphere for a seven-year-old sensitive child and she was relieved when at last, at the end of September they went to Somerset. Her mistress was apprehensive about the arrangements they would find at her sister’s house but had no need. Henrietta had put them in a cottage in the grounds of her house and nothing could have been more delightful. Wilson’s spirits lifted as soon as they saw the Surtees Cooks standing on the steps of their home to greet them – such a happy family they looked, all beaming and welcoming with no constraint in their bearing. And at last Pen had children to play with. Altham was only two years younger and Mary three, but both of them were such robust children and Pen himself so slight that they all seemed of an age. There was a swing on the apple tree in the garden and a dog to play with and a camp in the bushes and a stream to wade in and all manner of diversions if the cousins themselves had not been diversion enough. The Surtees Cooks’ nursemaid, Anne, was a pleasant girl with whom Wilson got on famously and she was only too willing to pass over the latest baby, Edward, only si
x months old, to the visitor. Wilson cradled the child and though this increased her longing for Oreste it also, in a curious way, made her feel nearer to him. To her great relief, there was a letter from Ellen, short and hurried, but with news that Oreste was healthy and happy and standing without aid.

  Sitting in the garden with Anne while both of them kept an eye on the children Wilson sighed with something near to genuine contentment. ‘It is very pleasant here,’ she murmured, looking at the leaves of the giant chestnut tree just beginning to turn yellow and brown.

  ‘Yes,’ Anne admitted, ‘but there’s nothing here for me.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  ‘Oh, the place is well enough and the master and mistress kind and the children good, but I can’t be stuck here all my days.’

  ‘Where would you go?’

  ‘London, o’course. Get some excitement while I can, see the world.’ Wilson smiled and seeing her smile Anne was offended. ‘’Tis all right for you,’ she said, ‘you’ve been to London and Paris and Florence and have seen everything.’ She shifted on the bench and put her head in her hands, her elbows on her knees.

  Looking at her, Wilson saw how restless the girl was and suddenly felt old. ‘Well, I am an old married maid,’ she said lightly, ‘and though I have travelled a bit, I grant you, I cannot think of a nicer place than this.’

  Her mistress agreed with her. ‘This is a happy place, is it not, Wilson?’ she remarked as her hair was brushed in the evening. ‘Do you feel it, dear?’

  Thinking how much more frequent the ‘dear’ was, Wilson replied at once that she did. ‘It comes from the top,’ she added. ‘Miss Henrietta, or I should say Mrs Surtees Cook, being so happy herself and her husband too.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Mrs Browning said, but thoughtfully. ‘I never thought to see my sister so happily married though it reflects on me to admit it. And with three children to her credit, though I would not swop my Penini for all of them together, not even for Mary.’

  ‘She is a pretty little thing with quite something of you about her, ma’am.’

  ‘Do you fancy so?’

  ‘I do, in the eyes. Miss Henrietta has not given her those dark eyes nor her father. They are like yours.’

  ‘Well, they are as well with Mary when no daughter of mine will ever emerge to have them.’ Acutely attentive, Wilson caught the faintest flicker of a question there but was too wise to leap in and say that perhaps one day … Instead, she changed the subject expertly to Pen’s friendship with Altham.

  ‘He is good for Pen,’ she said, ‘being a steady child given to careful thought. He told Anne yesterday he thought his cousin Pen a genius.’

  Mrs Browning laughed. ‘And he was right, Pen is a genius though what fate awaits him as such I would not like to guess. He is liable, do you not think, Wilson, to do mad things in his genius?’

  ‘He will grow out of the madness.’

  ‘Or into it. Lord, to think of him as a man!’

  When the time came to go back to London, the house was awash with tears and on cue it began to rain. Wilson’s last view of the Surtees Cooks was of them clustered under umbrellas at the gate, all waving and weeping, even the father of the family. Pen bawled his head off and was inconsolable while, in a corner of the carriage taking them to the station, his mother hunched into herself and spoke not a word. Only Mr Browning was cheerful, talking of whom he was to visit in London before they left for Italy and running over the plays he would like to see and the things he would like to do before their departure. In response, his wife closed her eyes and seemed to be suffering more. Wilson did not dare betray by the slightest expression either of face or in voice that she was excited at the prospect of their return to Italy. She was even more solicitous in her ministrations to her mistress than usual, matching her sighs with sighs of her own and putting all the sympathy she had into each gesture.

  Ferdinando had a feast prepared for them when they reached Devonshire Place, but though Mr Browning sat down to dine heartily off the splendid ham, his wife climbed the stairs wearily and begged Wilson to make her ready for bed immediately. She wept, with bowed head, while she was divested of her clothes and shivered, though it was not cold. Wilson made comforting little clicking noises with her tongue and pleaded with her to take heart for soon she would be back in the warmth of Italy and would feel better. At this, her mistress only wept harder, saying, ‘In Italy I will be further than ever from my sisters. Who knows when I will see them again? With every parting it grows worse, Wilson. I hate the sadness of these goodbyes.’ Wilson, tucking her up in bed after she had finished one sustaining cup of tea, thought of Oreste and his laugh and his little fists waving in the air and it was impossible to restrain a tear. ‘Do not you cry, dear,’ her mistress murmured, ‘or you will encourage me and I shall never stop. Do not let my grief affect you so.’ As if, Wilson thought, drawing the curtains, I cry only for her grief when I have more than enough of my own and cannot afford to give vent to it except under cover of another’s.

  The next month was wearisome. Though it was only October, the city was swathed in fog and with the fog Mrs Browning’s cough reached what she herself always called house-breaking proportions. Wilson was almost as weary as the invalid herself, what with sitting up with her and rubbing her back with liniment and dosing her with laudanum. Mr Browning took his turn but, at his wife’s insistence, went out frequently and did not return until the early hours of the morning by which time the coughing had become less harsh and some snatched sleep was possible. He would come into the bedroom to relieve Wilson and she was struck by the energy and vitality he displayed. He crossed the room with such quick strides and threw off his cloak impatiently and his eyes were bright and his whole being alert and vigorous. And there, in the bed, lay this poor creature half-dead with coughing, pale and drawn and listless. Leaving the room to go to Ferdinando, Wilson wondered how he could bear it. It was hard for a man in the prime of life to be saddled with such a broken wife and nothing to be done about it. Since her return to their service, she had been obliged to notice that things were different between the Brownings. Their bed more often held a woman alone, suffering, than a couple rejoicing. Her mistress never spoke of the misery this caused her but sometimes, when, after a night of making love, Wilson came into her room unable to suppress that satisfaction which Ferdinando gave her, not knowing it was written into her whole bearing, she would look at her and smile, tremulously, and say, ‘I forget you are a married woman sometimes, Wilson.’ The meaning was unmistakable.

  Each day was dominated by the necessity of correcting more sheets of Aurora Leigh. Dragging herself from bed with the greatest reluctance, Mrs Browning sat at her desk, coughing away and scanning the proofs for errors. There were so many sheets Wilson could hardly believe they were all of the one poem and, as she collected up the corrected pages and made them ready to return to the printer, she could not resist peering at the lines. Some shocked her, with descriptions she could not credit her mistress had written. Reading of Marian Earle’s pitiful room, so like many a servant girl’s attic she had known, Wilson could not think where her mistress had gleaned such knowledge. From her novels, she supposed. And then, skipping pages and reading of Marian Earle’s brutal rape, she could not believe this too had come from novels. Wilson’s heart beat faster as she tied those sheets and parcelled them up and she could not help saying when next her mistress paused for coffee, ‘It is a story of a poor girl then, ma’am?’ Mrs Browning smiled. ‘Among other things, Wilson. It tells a sorry tale of life for some women and will be villified for it.’ Thoughtfully, Wilson put down the cup. ‘I should like to read it, ma’am.’ ‘Then of course you must, Wilson. I think you will find it authentic.’

  Before she left England, on the last day of October, Wilson wrote a last strong letter to Ellen and William going over everything she had already said and urging them to take note:

  — that as soon as 1 can find a way Oreste will be brought to us and you must not think he is your
own. I know that is plain-speaking and may be in the way of offending you but I cannot help it. He is my son and only desperation keeps me from him. I would ask you Ellen to speak to him often of his mother and father and not to let him address you as such, shaking your head and saying no when he calls you Mama as he surely will. Say often Mama loves you and will come for you soon and if he is brought up with this it will not come as quite the shock it otherwise would to be taken from you. I fear that will not be until the spring, when many people travel to Florence and I will have no difficulty finding a courier if I or Ferdinando cannot come. By such time Oreste will be walking and beginning to talk and I would not leave him longer even if to come to him I must leave my employment again. Money will be sent every month and you are to use it Ellen to feed him and buy him clothes so he is not a beggar in your house. Please God, he being so young these months apart will in time be lost in his memory and I will be forgiven them. Should he be ill Ellen I beg you to send word with all haste and I will come to him. And I cannot end before setting out on this long journey without saying that should misfortune befall myself and Ferdinando and we are, God forbid, taken from this earth by sudden fever or like calamity you, in bringing up Oreste as your own, which I find true comfort in knowing you would, must not let him forget who his parents were and that they loved him and had no choice in what they did.

  She was quite exhausted with emotion by the time she had finished. Death seemed to loom before her eyes, the death of her baby, the death of herself, and it was agony to smile and be pleasant and hide her sense of panic and fear. It was not until Marseilles was left behind and Italy appeared on the horizon that she began to recover and drag herself out of the half-dazed state she had been in. Her mistress seemed similarly affected, announcing her cough seemed to have ‘dropped off’, and as for Ferdinando he sang and shouted and grew more exhilarated with every mile they covered. Only Mr Browning seemed subdued and remained so while his wife declared herself the happiest woman in the world on re-entering the Casa Guidi and finding it looking better than ever after her long absence. While she flitted from one beloved room to another, exclaiming over reclaimed treasures, Mr Browning stood looking out of the window onto the side of the San Felice church and Wilson was sure she saw in his expression a sense of utter boredom.

 

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