Lady's Maid

by Margaret Forster

  — all life seems a trap again Ellen and I expect it has too often seemed so to you and will yet. However hard I work and struggle for the future there are ever snares to catch me and sometimes I see no end to it and think myself doomed to pass my days in toil and nothing else. All of which you will be tired of hearing but it has been brought about by my great fear that my husband will be taken off by the Brownings once more, this time to France and there is nothing we can do to prevent it they being the masters of our fate. But I am resolved that if it must be so I will obtain permission from the Brownings to have my husband journey to England at the end of the holiday and bring his son back with him. He would not need above four days’ leave from them and since Oreste is now or will be by then nearly three which is the age Pen first travelled at I cannot see any reason why he need inconvenience the party. The more I think on it the more I see that this cruel sentence may yet be turned to advantage and may be God’s way of effecting what I most desire and have been unable to bring about. I will write again as soon as Ferdinando hears he is to go and when I do you must prepare Oreste for the change Ellen so that it is not sprung on him.

  But before the decision had been made Wilson was astonished to receive the speediest reply she had ever had from Ellen and quite the longest. She wrote, with an unaccustomed fluency, which made her sister wonder if the words had been thought up by her alone, that:

  — it would not be good for Oreste to leave here at this moment since he has been ill and though he is making a good recovery the doctor who you can be sure I was quick to call and no expense being spared but your money put to good use has said it would injure his general well-being to travel in his weakened state. He has said the change in diet and water would be calamitous and that he ought to rest where all is familiar for six months or more. I tell you this sister only that you may be warned and not endanger your dear son’s health or put your husband to an unnecessary and useless journey.

  Wilson was certainly warned – warned instantly by the absurd nature of the letter, of Ellen’s sense of panic. It was all too obvious what her plot was and she went straight away to see Mrs Browning, resolved to ask outright if Ferdinando was to go to France and if so to plead her case. She was at first misunderstood.

  ‘Why, Wilson,’ Mrs Browning said, opening her eyes wide, ‘it had not occurred to me, nor I am sure to my husband, to think Ferdinando might not go with us. How would we manage, dear? He is our servant, we depend upon him.’

  ‘Ma’am, I wish only to know.’

  ‘Then I think you must take it that you do know.’

  To Mrs Browning’s clear surprise, Wilson smiled and looked pleased. ‘Then, ma’am, I beg of you, let Ferdinando go to England and bring home our son.’ Rapidly, she outlined her plan, stressing the ease of it all and the perfect opportunity it represented to right what she must surely agree was a manifest wrong. ‘And if those four days he will need to collect Oreste were to come off Ferdinando’s own holiday which he would not take again then you would lose nothing, ma’am, if you please.’

  There was a dead silence. Mrs Browning put down her teacup and cleared her throat. Wilson waited, not sure how to interpret the sudden change of atmosphere. Carefully, Mrs Browning dabbed at the corners of her mouth with a handkerchief. Still she said nothing.

  Desperately, Wilson burst out, ‘I hope I have not spoken out of turn, ma’am, I hope I have not given offence?’

  ‘I am admittedly a little taken aback, Wilson,’ Mrs Browning finally said, her eyes lowered and concentrating on the empty cup. ‘There is a great deal to take in in what you have said, too much to be done all in a moment. I will have to speak to my husband and consider carefully with him. Such an agreement could not be undertaken lightly.’

  ‘No, ma’am. When might I look for an answer? Only I would wish to tell my sister as soon as possible and put paid to her nonsense.’

  ‘I really cannot say, Wilson. All is confusion as to our precise plans as yet. I only wish I was clear as to what we will do myself, you may be sure.’

  Yet the answer came speedily, the very next day, and was a shock. The party would leave for France at the beginning of July and Ferdinando would not be of it. He was told this and not Wilson. When he came to tell her, thinking she would be pleased (though, as he knew she suspected, he was not exactly pleased himself) she stared at him in disbelief and said over and over ‘Not go? not go?’ like a parrot. He spread his hands wide in a gesture of incomprehension and invited her to make of this unexpected turn of events what she could. To his dismay, she wept and only then did he hear of the plan with which she had gone to Mrs Browning. Then he too was distressed, seeing how it would all have fitted in. ‘Now I must write to Ellen,’ Wilson sobbed, ‘and she will think I have bowed to her wishes and feel even more the mistress of the situation.’ Wiping her tears with the corner of her apron and clutching the baby to her she searched for the reasons for this volte-face. What had she done? What had she said? Over and over she asked the questions and became so demented by them that, though she trembled with indignation, she once more went into the Casa Guidi and, controlling herself as best she could, asked to see her old mistress. Annunciata, with evident enjoyment, said Mrs Browning had the headache and could see no one. ‘I have nursed her with the headache,’ Wilson said, ‘it is nothing to me or to her.’ Back the maid went, only to reappear shaking her head sorrowfully and saying this headache was so very bad as to quite incapacitate the invalid and render her unfit even for Wilson. Just as she was turning to go, shaking with mortification, Mr Browning came out of his room and said, ‘Ah, Wilson,’ and she turned, her face working with the effort of trying to calm herself. He saw her state at once and without another word took her arm and led her into the little sitting room.

  ‘Now come, Wilson,’ he said, ‘sit down and let us talk about this sensibly.’

  They talked sensibly, for full half an hour, but at the end of it Wilson felt neither clearer nor happier, only numb. Mr Browning had expressed himself surprised that she had failed to recognise and acknowledge the consideration for herself and her well-being which had influenced their decision about Ferdinando. Had they not remembered her misery at being in Florence alone, without him, the previous summer? Of course they had, and remembering had made them examine their arrangements more closely to see if they could not do without their man-servant. They had known it was not right to separate a man from his wife for several months when she had a young baby and a business, in a manner of speaking, to care for. And now this was the thanks they got, these tears of hers, this dismay at what they had trusted would be hailed as good news.

  ‘I ask you, Wilson,’ Mr Browning said, gentle but aggrieved, ‘what did you expect of us?’

  She sat with bowed head for a moment then looked directly at him and replied, ‘It is only my child, sir, the wanting of my child, and suddenly seeing a way to get him, and then it being taken away. I am confused, sir.’

  Mr Browning shifted uncomfortably. ‘Certainly,’ he said, ‘it is hard to be separated from your first child. I have often thought so. But you could not in all honesty, Wilson, expect us to make that our first consideration.’

  ‘No, sir. But it seemed, sir, when first I talked to Mrs Browning, before ever I mentioned my plan, or else I would not have mentioned it, it seemed Ferdinando was to go, that there was no choice, that he was nigh essential to your comfort, and then, having spoken out, to find he was not and therefore he would not go and my plan was to come to nothing – it is hard to understand, sir.’

  ‘Our plans changed, Wilson, and my wife had not kept pace with them. We need to be as small a party as possible in order to accommodate in one house, one holiday house we shall rent, all of us and members of our respective families, do you see?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Well, then, there is no mystery after all. And to look on the bright side, you will have your husband with you throughout the summer and I daresay you will enjoy it very much.’

&nb
sp; She could not say, at the end of it, that she had. She could not even say she truly felt she had had Ferdinando with her those four months. What precisely he did with himself all day long she never could fathom, but he was not in her company above two hours or so each day. He made great play of all the tasks in the Casa Guidi he had been left to do – furniture to repair, decorations to see to – but to Wilson’s experienced eye they would not have occupied an energetic person more than a month at the most. But then Ferdinando was no longer energetic. The fearful heat of the city seemed to encourage him to sleep half his time away and she had never felt more English than when she observed his devotion that summer to the long siesta. And he drank. Living with the Brownings, his intake had been modest but living with her it rapidly increased. She did not provide him with wine, to be sure, but he took it in the caffè he frequented, a caffè where politics were argued over far into the night and the arguers fell asleep at the table. Often, he came home exhausted at dawn and slept the whole of the day away. Her anger grew and with it she became shrewish. It horrified her to hear her own voice screaming at her husband for his indolence but she could not help herself. At least Ferdinando’s reaction was to be penitent and vow he would not visit the caffè again.

  Only with Pilade did he act as she would wish a husband and father to act. With the baby, he was gentleness itself, playing with him and caring for him with true devotion. On the evenings when the three of them went abroad together, the worst of the heat over, Wilson felt more content than at any other time, more part of a family. Ferdinando, a clean white blouse on and freshly shaved, looked the handsome fellow who had first attracted her and the way he carried his son, with ease and pride, made her feel warm towards him. No Englishman, she fancied, would bear his child in quite such a way. And she knew herself to look better, clad in what passed for finery these days, than she did in the house where with so much work to do she had not a moment to spare for her appearance. Those evenings were the good times, when she did not question so fiercely what she was making of her life. Otherwise, day after day, a restlessness had seized her again, a restlessness she remembered of old and of which she had learnt to be afraid. It was harder than ever to face up to its cause. Did she not now have a husband, a child, a home? So why should she be plagued once more with feelings of frustration? What did she want, apart from Oreste?

  Always, she came back to that, with some relief: everything could be explained by her yearning for her other child, the root of all her discontent. But even as she was citing this as the reason, citing it only to herself, she was wondering whether it were true. Suppose, by some miracle, Oreste was brought to her – would she then be happy? Was that all it would take to banish the feeling of gloom which so often half-incapacitated her? It was no good confiding in Ferdinando who merely stared at her as though she were mad, should she even begin to confess her inner dissatisfaction. Life to him was simple: food, wine, sleep, love, and as little work as decently possible. Of the love, she knew he was growing tired but since her own ardour had considerably diminished after Pilade’s birth she was not disposed to criticise him for this. They were now an old married couple and it was to be expected. But she did not like the way his eye followed a pretty girl, nor the way theirs could sometimes follow him. His appetite for all the other necessities of life had increased and she suspected his carnal instincts were merely turned in another direction. This seemed, more than anything, to symbolise the difference between them. It made her grow cold to think what her marriage might become.

  And then, in September, three weeks before the Brownings returned, she received a letter which changed everything. It was black-edged and addressed in Ellen’s hand, the very communication she had always dreaded and feared. Terror gripped her so completely that she was incapable of opening it and let it fall to the floor where she very nearly followed it in a faint. She remembered mother’s compassion in saving her from the certain shock of such evil envelopes. But though the blood was pounding in her head and her vision was blurred she managed to take up the envelope again and lie down with it on her bed. It was mid-morning, the sun not quite at its highest, the rooms still bearable, with every shutter and curtain now closed ready for the afternoon glare. Pilade was asleep, Ferdinando in the Casa Guidi supervising the painting of Mr Browning’s study. She could hear Maria clattering about with her water buckets in the yard and far off church bells ringing somewhere north of the Arno. She found herself thinking that when she had forced herself to read how and when Oreste had died she would take her sleeping baby and drown both him and herself forthwith. She would do it at night when it would be the easiest thing in the world. All her agitation of the summer she suddenly saw as moving towards this end – she had known, without knowing it, of this tragedy, she had been what her old mistress had called ‘pre-sentimental’. And now she was quite prepared and calm and ready to end it all. Opening the letter carefully her hands were quite steady and her eyes focused on Ellen’s words without difficulty. Only they were not the words she had expected: it was William who had died. Oreste was well.

  It was a sign and she accepted it as such. She got off her bed resolute and determined. Life, her life, the lives of Oreste and Pilade and Ferdinando, must be valued. Oreste had been spared and it could only be for a purpose. Swiftly, she wrote to Ellen, exclaiming at

  — the cruelty of this my poor sister when you have had so much to bear. I weep to hear of this latest affliction and so unexpected with him in the prime of his life and never an illness and being a big strong man. I do not rightly understand how the medical men could not save him after the accident since you say the cut seemed small and did not appear to trouble him but I have heard that for the blood to be poisoned it takes only a pin-prick and that a cut where there is manure about can have this effect if not noticed. Ellen, I would that you could come to me now that you are alone and would ask you to consider it seriously. What is there to keep you in that sorry place? It is not your real home, you have no family together. We are only two of us now and we ought to be closer. Think, Ellen, what Mother would have advised. Why not, dear, sell the house and come with Oreste to us?

  It was the perfect solution. Eagerly, Wilson waited for an answer, quite convinced of what it would be.

  Chapter Twenty Six

  THE MOMENT THE Brownings returned – Mrs Browning looking, Wilson thought, rather worse than better after her French holiday – Ferdinando reformed. It was galling to her to observe his change in demeanour. There were no more sustained bouts of drinking, no more hanging around the caffè and he was altogether brisker and more efficient. At least when he was not with her she now knew where he was but the comfort this brought her was not as complete as it might have been because he was also with Annunciata during those times. The girl had changed. Four months in France had quietened her down and at the same time given her a veneer of sophistication quite lacking before. Wilson smiled to see it, a trifle grimly. Hadn’t it happened to her, in her own day? Annunciata had eyes and ears and both had been busy conveying subtle messages. Whereas before she had been a rough-and-ready Italian peasant, flashing with high spirits, now she thought a little about how she seemed to others and tempered her boisterous good humour. She walked rather than ran, smiled rather than laughed out loud, dropped her eyes instead of staring frankly. The effect was extraordinary. All the natural grace in her now flowed through her body, unspoiled by her bursts of youthful energy. She was quite beautiful.

  Mrs Browning was as aware of this as Wilson and indeed appeared to find nothing hurtful in mentioning it. Watching Annunciata remove her coffee cup she remarked to Wilson, ‘You will hardly recognise Annunciata, Wilson. Has she not improved out of all recognition?’

  ‘Indeed she has.’

  ‘We have tamed her on our travels, I think, and yet not taken from her that which is precious.’

  ‘Precious?’

  ‘Her youth, Wilson, the most precious thing of all, you will agree.’

  Wilson hesitated
only a moment. ‘Why, no, ma’am, I don’t know that it is the most precious thing of all, if I understand you rightly. There are things dearer to me, at any rate, than lost youth.’

  Mrs Browning was amused. ‘Are you sure, Wilson? What can be more precious than life itself and if one is youthful there is more of it.’

  ‘I had rather have the certainties of middle-age, ma’am.’

  ‘You are not middle-aged, so how can you know this? And it is a loathsome term, I detest it. One is young or one is mature and that is all there is to it.’

  She spoke with such vehemence Wilson thought it better not to risk a reply, though in her head she practised saying what nonsense she thought Mrs Browning spoke. But then she had always reacted strangely to the subject of ageing, had always feared it. As if reading her thoughts, Mrs Browning then said, ‘It is not that I am afraid of dying, you know. I have no fear, knowing it is but a passing from one world to another. But the mask of age is ugly to me. I like to have young people about me.’