Lady's Maid

by Margaret Forster

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘No, ma’am. Quite. Then what are we to do, since it is our intention to stay until the end of October if we can?’

  ‘I do not know.’

  ‘You do not know. Neither do I. Yet it seems I am expected to know, to think for you. I do not take this kindly, Wilson, and my husband will be angry.’

  Wilson put the brush down. Her hand trembled too much to use it. ‘I could not help it, ma’am,’ she whispered, ‘being a married woman, though I tried to avoid it.’

  An expression of absolute distaste flitted across her mistress’s face. ‘Well, you did not succeed and now we must all suffer. I had better speak to my husband before we discuss this further.’

  There was never another discussion. The next day Mr Browning, though a good deal kinder than his wife had been, summoned Wilson and told her she must return to Florence on September 1st by which time a replacement would be found. He said, gently enough, that though he knew it was hard for her to be parted from her husband at such a time, it was not possible that she should risk the last months of pregnancy up here in Lucca. She listened with bowed head, no fight in her, no energy even to cry, and looked up only when he said he and his wife proposed to make her a present of money to mark the end of her service with them. The word ‘money’ did not penetrate her consciousness so much as ‘the end of your service’, but Mr Browning obviously thought otherwise. ‘Yes, money,’ he repeated, ‘enough, Wilson, for you to rent a house for a year and, I imagine, fill it with paying boarders. It is the best we can do. What do you say?’ She said what she was expected to say, the only thing she could say: she said thank you and half curtseyed.

  When she told Ferdinando her fate he appeared overjoyed and could not understand her fears. He thought all their problems solved and began excitedly to calculate how good a living they could make once the baby was born. ‘I will be alone,’ Wilson said in reply. ‘Who will take care of me? Where shall I turn?’ Ferdinando brushed this aside – he knew women in Florence who would come to her for virtually nothing. ‘Women,’ Wilson said, ‘women I do not know and who do not know me? And in an empty house, which I have yet to find.’ Again, her husband could not see the difficulty. All of Florence had emptied for the summer and a house would be easy to come by when she had the money in her hand to secure it. While she stared at him, seeing only a vision of herself trudging from door to door in search of shelter, he gazed at her with shining eyes, blessing his employers for their generosity. Unlike her, he had already worked out what could be got for the sum promised and reckoned there would even be a little over after the year’s rent. This made her laugh. ‘Oh, Ferdinando,’ she said wearily, ‘a house is more than rent and a household does not run on nothing. There will be expense beyond imagining and our only income until I am in a position to care for boarders your salary. What can we do on that, with my own gone?’

  But nothing could depress him. While she wandered through the Casa Betti sick at heart, he sang and whistled and was plainly relieved. Hearing him, her mistress raised an eyebrow and said, ‘Ferdinando is cheerful, at least.’ She knew the ‘at least’ was directed at her and flushed. ‘I am sorry, ma’am,’ she said quietly, averting her face, ‘but the prospect before me does not incline me to cheerfulness.’ There was no reply. Mrs Browning went on to give her instructions for the arrival of Isa Blagden and Robert Lytton who had come, at the Brownings’ behest, to stay nearby and were to be entertained to supper. At the Casa Betti, where space was restricted, there was no room for a housemaid or skivvy, so Wilson was expected to share the work with Ferdinando. She noticed that evening as she brought the chicken-dish to the table that there was a lull in the conversation until she had left the room and her ears burned. Later, Isa Blagden sought her out and put an arm round her shoulders and spoke to her kindly. The kindness was Wilson’s undoing. She wept in spite of herself and said she did not know how she would manage in Florence on her own. Isa consoled her and said she would be there herself in September and would be sure to come to her aid. ‘I am not wanted here, at any rate,’ Wilson said miserably, ‘my mistress cannot abide the sight of me.’ Isa squeezed her hand and said there were reasons for this and they would pass.

  What reasons? Throughout the next week Wilson tried to think of any. Why was her mistress so remote, so unfeeling towards her? Why did she treat her as though she had committed a crime? It could only be because she was about to be inconvenienced and that seemed such a small burden for her to bear. Yet Wilson saw it was probably the truth. Inconvenience was detested by Mrs Browning. Currently, she found her husband’s devotion to Mr Lytton inconvenient. Mr Lytton had fallen ill the very day after he dined with them on his arrival and was pronounced to have succumbed to the fever prevalent in Lucca that year. Mr Browning hastened to his side and nursed him and Wilson heard her mistress tell him it was ‘inconvenient, Robert, to have you there so much and not wise, for what if you carry this dreadful fever to Pen?’

  Before ever he did, Wilson herself fell ill. She woke one morning to find herself incapable of standing on her own two feet. Her hands shook, her head swirled and sweat filmed her entire body. She vomited, had loose bowels, and cramp-like pains incapacitated her. Knowing nothing of the consternation which the worried Ferdinando caused when he reported this, she lay clutching her stomach, sure she was about to give birth prematurely. A doctor was brought and said he thought this not an immediate danger but that in view of her pregnancy she should stay in bed for a week or until all symptoms disappeared. He gave her a draught which sent her to sleep and when she awoke the pains at least had gone, only the profound weakness remaining. She could hear Pen shouting and laughing in the garden where he was playing with Doady Eckley, the son of his parents’ new friends, but otherwise it was peaceful. She felt no temptation to try to get up. All day she remained still in the darkened room, watching the slats of light change in direction as the sun moved outside, and finding in the hum of insects and the spinning of dust motes something soothing. She was not surprised when Ferdinando came in to her and, sitting on the end of their truckle bed, told her she was to go back to Florence as soon as she could get up. Annunciata, a new maid, was arriving in three days’ time from Florence.

  She supposed she could just have gone on lying there forever. Why not? Who could do anything? The Brownings had not so far forgotten their previous devotion to her that they would cast her out, would lift her from her sick-bed and hurl her down the mountain. But it was not in her nature to exploit her illness. Before the three days were over, she was up and walking about, though hardly with the strength of a kitten. At least, when she went in to her mistress to attend to her morning toilet for the first time since she had collapsed, she was sent away promptly with instructions to rest some more and not think of doing anything. That comforted her a little. But all comfort was banished when the new maid Annunciata arrived. She was a slip of a girl, pretty, with a mass of dark curls tied in a bunch and dimples in her cheeks when she smiled, which seemed to be constantly. Wilson stared at her and hated her at once. The contrast with her cumbersome, depressed self was painful and humiliated her. She saw looks of delighted appraisal everywhere – from Mrs Browning, from her husband and most of all from her own Ferdinando. Only Pen resisted the girl’s gaiety and charm and clung to his Lily.

  On August 29th, she left the Casa Betti, blind with the tears she had vowed she would not mortify herself by shedding. Her mistress seemed embarrassed by her utter dejection. She kissed her and said, ‘Poor Wilson, poor dear,’ and Mr Browning said, ‘I would this could be otherwise, Wilson,’ in a worried tone. He had arranged for a trap to take her to the station and Ferdinando was to go as far as the train with her and see her safely on board. She did not attempt to say anything, only allowed herself to be put in the trap. She did not wave, did not even look to see if anyone waved to her, but sat, slumped, wretched and devoid of dignity. Parting from Ferdinando was over in a second since they had misjudged the time and the train was
about to leave. She had only a moment to settle herself and be kissed by him and then he had gone. It crossed her mind he seemed relieved to go.

  And now she was alone, starting, she supposed, yet another new life. Her service with the Brownings had ended, they had said so. There was no mention, this time, of her returning. Thirteen years as maid, nurse, housekeeper, seamstress – what had she not been at one time or another and sometimes all of them together? Over. Ended. And her marriage, what of that? A wife living apart from her husband, a woman managing a boarding house on her own. A new life.

  She had not the energy for it, for anything.

  PART

  1857–1861

  Chapter Twenty Five

  THE HOUSE FRIGHTENED her, which, she repeatedly told herself, was foolish. It was not even a large house, only tall, with long flights of steep stairs, and had two rooms on each of the four floors. None of them were in a good state of decoration. The paintwork, a dark brown, was peeling and the walls, unusually, had been hurriedly and superficially covered with an ugly beige paper which did not cling properly to the plaster. The floors were for the most part tiled, large patterned tiles, not unattractive, but in need of thorough cleaning. Wilson could see that when scrubbed the red and white patterns upon them might be pretty. But not even scrubbing would alter the fact that the scullery was dark and ill-equipped and one look at the ancient stove made her glad it was still high summer and heating was not necessary. She did not even need to cook since she lived on bread and melon and tomatoes, lacking the energy and appetite to bother with anything else and having only herself to consider. She had engaged a young girl, only fourteen years of age, called Maria, brought to her by the caretaker of the house, and vouched for as ‘good and obedient’. It was a strange experience, to be hiring a servant, but Wilson was in too confused a state to relish this evidence of her change in status. It had been all she could do, as she wrote to Ellen:

  — to get myself to Florence. I lay on my bed in a cheap lodging house and cried and I tell you Ellen I wished I was with you and receiving your kindness which was great to me. There is no one here who cares for me or will look out for me and I must shift for myself in everything which is not easy now I am big with child and not well as I was with my first-born. It was only the thought of this poor baby in me that made me stir at all and get myself to a friend of Ferdinando’s who is in the way of knowing all the business of the street being a wine-merchant and visited by all. He knew at once of a house to let for a whole year, the owners being abroad and failing to let it before they left last month and seeing my condition he took pity and had the caretaker prevailed upon to come to me at his premises. I had no interest in what this house should be like wishing only for a place and quickly to lay my head and could hardly rouse myself to inspect it. It is a poor house Ellen and not clean but it is cheap and furnished after a fashion and best of all lies next to the Casa Guidi which raised my spirits. I am now installed and with a maid-of-all-work with me named Maria. She is near the age we were Ellen when we first went into service and has no idea how things should be done. I set her the first day to clean the floors starting at the top and expecting her to reach the bottom at the end of the day or at least the last floor, but Ellen she had not managed more than two rooms in eight hours and those not well done. She said carrying the water up from the well had taken a great deal of time which, when I saw her filling the bucket, I was not surprised since she lowered the rope slow enough to make me fall asleep watching. Then she must sit in the sun before hauling it back up and altogether I was enraged and wished I was in a condition to show her how it should be done. I am at her mercy at the moment though I keep her and pay her well and might look with justice for harder work from her, but when I am over my lying-in I will be behind her you can be sure. She is pleasant enough but how reliable I cannot say and I am not depending on her for the birth. A woman I know has given me the name of a midwife who will come and otherwise I shall have to engage a nurse for the shortest time possible since I cannot be without assistance when my time comes. Ferdinando will return with the Brownings towards the end of October and I pray my delivery will not be before the middle of November. I do little but rest and try to put this house into some sort of order but as yet there is neither pleasure nor profit in it. By next week there will be two rooms ready for occupation but whether I will find takers I do not know or if I will be up to providing the services required. I think of Oreste day and night and weep to think he will be two years of age when this second child is born and of those two years I have had so little. But I feel that I am now in the way of bringing him to me since I have a house and am no longer in service and need only to arrange to have him brought over. Tell him often Ellen that he is to go to Italy soon where his mother and father who love him greatly await him. Tell him Ellen that he might grow accustomed to it.

  But would Ellen tell him? She wished desperately that Ellen were in London that she might send Lizzie to judge how Oreste fared and what he understood, but as it was she had no means of knowing. Nothing could be more unsatisfactory than Ellen’s barely decipherable notes which came rarely and only after money had been remitted. On September 1st, as soon as she was back in Florence, she had sent £12, almost ten months’ wages to Ellen and had stressed the importance of letting her know such a large sum of money had arrived. A note duly came at the end of September, hurtful in its brevity, frustrating in its lack of information:

  — thank you for the money sister which is put to good use your son being in need of shoes and all manner of apparel since he grows apace. We are well. I hope you are well. The summer has been poor. You need have no worry your son is well cared for as I trust you believe.

  Again and again Wilson read it, trying to read some comforting significance into Ellen’s twice referring to Oreste as ‘your son’. It was no more than the truth but showed, surely that her sister was not forgetting the fact. And if Oreste was growing so fast it could only mean he was healthy. But she thought of how, if the positions had been reversed, she would have written pages full of detail to Ellen, would have described a child in such a way as to make him spring from the writing, alive and visible. Oreste, in Ellen’s notes, remained hidden from her. He was lost, only the memory of the baby he no longer was having any reality in her mind.

  Isa Blagden found her weeping over this one afternoon and took the time to console her, pointing out that soon, in her new position, Oreste would join her and at two years of age would quickly become hers again. Wilson nodded and dried her tears yet again and made some effort to smile. She asked, with some apprehension, how Miss Blagden had left Ferdinando and was told he was well but anxious about her and eager to return to Florence. She also added, without being asked, that Annunciata was not, in Pen’s opinion, found to be a substitute for his Lily and that the maid had fallen ill with fever soon after Wilson left and had been useless to anyone. But what Miss Blagden had sought her out for was not only to ask after her welfare or bring news from Lucca but to offer her two lady-boarders for three months. The ladies, sisters, were English and looking for somewhere cheap but clean while they stayed on in Florence to attend art classes. Wilson was immediately worried that the rooms she had ready would not be thought adequate, that indeed she did not know if she herself thought they were adequate, and that she would be unable to prepare meals in her feeble condition, but Miss Blagden laid to rest all her anxieties. She inspected the rooms and found them perfectly tolerable and assured Wilson the ladies would require only coffee in the morning and would otherwise dine elsewhere. If Wilson’s maid could be guaranteed to clean the rooms each day and deal with washing, which could be sent out, and empty the slops and bring up hot water then that would suffice.

  It was with some excitement that Wilson greeted the Misses Wynne on October 1st and she was aware that the challenge of preparing for them had in some curious way made her feel better. They were younger than she had expected and seemed shy and reticent, emphasising frequently, all the way
up the stairs, that they wanted only a bolt-hole and must not be thought of as real boarders. When Wilson was obliged to rest on the stairs, they both begged her not to continue and when she insisted went either side of her, helping her along. The rooms were pronounced charming, which made her smile with amusement for charming they were not. They were bare and shabby and if it had not been for the pretty yellow cloths she had made for the tables and the yellow and orange cushions she had covered for the chairs and the blue vase full of roses she had asked Maria to place on the chest of drawers, then they would have been dismal indeed. The Misses Wynne flew to the window and exclaimed in ecstasy over the view of roof-tops and more roof-tops, and then exclaimed again at their luck in finding somewhere so peaceful and perfect.

  Wilson quickly realised how lucky she had been to have the Misses Wynne directed to her by kind Miss Blagden. They could not have been less trouble, leaving the house at ten in the morning and not returning until nine in the evening, having already dined. She hardly saw them, but their presence at night made her feel easier than did Maria’s and she slept better. They paid their rent every Friday (the money was put straight into a jar for Oreste’s journey) and always enquired if there was any way in which they could be of use to their landlady in her circumstances. They were polite and concerned but only once betrayed any real curiosity. The younger of the two, Miss Violet, said one Friday, with some hesitation, ‘You were maid, I believe, to Mrs Browning?’

  ‘Indeed yes, miss.’

  ‘And before her marriage, I think?’

  ‘Oh, well before. I went to her in 1844, before ever Mr Browning appeared on the scene.’

  Miss Violet clasped her hands together in an anguish of delight and exclaimed, ‘How romantic! Oh, how I should have liked to be you!’