Never Look Back

by Lesley Pearse

  Lily emerged. Her face was drained of all colour and she held on to the door post for support.

  ‘Sit down out here for a moment,’ Matilda said, taking her arm and leading her over to the bench. ‘It’s too hot to go back in the kitchen.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Lily said in a weak voice, sinking gratefully on to the bench and looking up at Matilda. ‘I was feeling fine when I got up. I intended to go out early to buy some calico to make Tabby a new dress. But as soon as I opened the kitchen door and smelt the bacon, it just came over me.’

  In a flash of intuition Matilda knew her mistress was expecting a baby. She had seen Peggie exactly like this when she was carrying George, in her case it was just a faint whiff of fish which made her retch. She’d heard flower-girls discussing early symptoms and around Finders Court such things were bandied around as casually as talk of the weather.

  ‘Could you be having a baby?’ Matilda asked gingerly. She knew ladies thought it vulgar to speak of such things. ‘I know sickness like that often happens in the early months.’

  Lily looked up at her sharply. At first her expression was one of indignation, and a blush coloured her face. But just as Matilda thought she was about to be reprimanded, Lily’s eyes widened and a smile lit up her eyes.

  ‘Oh Matty,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Do you think that’s possible?’

  Matilda wanted to laugh. It seemed ridiculous that a married woman who already had one child should want confirmation from an unmarried servant. But she managed merely to smile and took her mistress’s hand in hers. ‘It depends if you’ve had your monthlies,’ she whispered. ‘If you haven’t, you probably are, but you should see the doctor.’

  Before Lily could confirm or deny this, Giles came out, quickly followed by Tabitha, and Matilda went back into the kitchen to eat the breakfast she’d left on the stove.

  Yet her appetite vanished the moment she thought what this turn of events could mean to her. However joyful it would be for the Milsons to have another child, it might very well turn out to be yet another chain to keep her here.

  Tabitha came running in. ‘Mama said she would like tea, toast and a lightly boiled egg,’ she said. ‘Papa told me to come and help you. That means they want to talk about something they don’t want me to know about, doesn’t it?’

  Matilda was forced to laugh at the little girl’s keen intuition. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘But it could mean they think it’s time you learned something useful, like laying a tray for Mama.’

  Lily was none the worse for her sickness, she ate her breakfast in the parlour and then went out to buy the calico, taking Tabitha with her. Giles went off to see the Reverend Kirkbright, and Matilda was left alone to do the daily chores. As she shook the feather mattress from her employers’ bed out of the window, she thought Lily’s remarkable recovery ruled out a stomach upset. That made her wonder when the baby had started. If it was during their holiday, then she would be around three months already, which meant the baby would be born around Christmas.

  ‘I can’t stay that long,’ she said aloud as she continued vigorously to shake the mattress. ‘Let them find a new nursemaid. I can’t stay for another winter in New York without Flynn.’

  Chapter Nine

  At the end of July the Reverend Kirkbright sent a message round to State Street asking if Matilda could collect two small brothers from a tenement in Mulberry Bend and take them straight out to the Home in New Jersey. Their widowed mother had died from tuberculosis and there was no one else to look after them.

  Sad as it was to be given the task of removing two recently orphaned children from the only home they’d ever known, it came as a welcome diversion for Matilda. The confirmation of the pregnancy had thrilled the Milsons, but as Lily was still suffering from bouts of sickness, and very tetchy because of the hot, sticky weather, it had fallen upon Matilda to run the house and care for Tabitha single-handed.

  Two days earlier a letter from Flynn finally arrived. This ought to have soothed some of her anxiety and increased her determination to tell the Milsons about him, but it had left her even more confused. Flynn had posted it in Charleston back in May, and at the time of writing he had only just got there. His loving messages were very comforting, his glowing description of Charleston cheering, but in the absence of news of a job, and with no address to write back to, she was left in much the same void as before.

  The chance of a day out in New Jersey, to see all the other children and Cissie again, well away from the stink and noise of the city, was almost as good as being offered a holiday. So Matilda put aside her worries and set off to collect the two small boys at eight in the morning with pleasurable anticipation.

  Mulberry Bend was almost as notorious a slum area as neighbouring Five Points, but the boys, Arthur and Ronald, aged five and four respectively, were being held on to by a kindly shopkeeper who had been a friend of their mother. They were dear little boys with blond hair and blue eyes, and though poorly dressed, thin and a little dirty, it was clear they had been well loved by their mother. They showed no apprehension whatever at going with Matilda, and by the time she’d got them down to the ferry, the excitement of a boat trip out to the countryside banished the last of their shyness.

  Job met her at the ferry with the cart, and to Matilda’s delight Sidney was with him. He was sturdy and much taller now, his hair as fiery as her own half-brothers’, and his skin freckled from the sun. On the ride back to the Home he regaled Arthur and Ronald with tales about the pigs and chickens they now kept and he promised them they could help him feed them later.

  Cissie rushed out to greet Matilda with great warmth, throwing her arms around her and insisting she came at once to see Peter and Pearl. It was surprising enough to see that Cissie had become quite buxom, with rosy cheeks like a farmer’s wife, and her short dark hair curling becomingly around her cap, but even better to find that the babies were as fat as butter, placidly sitting up on a blanket under a tree in the meadow behind the Home.

  Once Matilda had passed Arthur and Ronald over to Miss Rowbottom for a bath and some dinner, she returned to Cissie, the babies and the other very small children. Sitting down on the grass with them all, Matilda asked Cissie if she still wanted to leave.

  Cissie gave one of her dazzling smiles. ‘Don’t reckon so, I wouldn’t mind a night out now and then, or a pal of me own, but,’ she paused and waved one arm expansively at the meadow and the children gathered around her, ‘I’d have to be crazy to leave all this, wouldn’t I?’

  Matilda felt a surge of tenderness and admiration for the young mother. Everything had been stacked against her right from her birth, yet from somewhere deep within she’d found the strength of character not only to cope with her dismal lot in life, but also to seize the only opportunity presented to her, and make it work for her. Looking at her now with her shiny dark curls, rosy cheeks and well-rounded body, happily cuddling her son and her friend’s baby, no one could possibly guess what hell she’d been through. If the governors of the Home ever wanted just one piece of real evidence that the rescue work in Five Points was worthwhile, Cissie and her babies were living proof.

  Matilda took Peter on to her lap, hardly able to believe that this plump, smiling baby was the same bony little scrap she’d washed back at Dr Kupicha’s only nine months earlier. He had been bald then but now he had a thatch of light brown hair, two teeth, and his cheeks, arms and fat legs were the colour of honey.

  ‘You would indeed be crazy to want to leave,’ she said. ‘You can’t imagine how hot and stuffy it is in New York, Cissie, it smells so lovely here, and there’s always a breeze.’

  ‘I ain’t forgotten what it’s like, not summer nor winter,’ Cissie replied, and a cloud passed over her face as if she wished she could forget. ‘But you look a bit peaky to me. What’s up? Is your mistress mean to you?’

  ‘No. Of course not.’ Matilda half smiled. Lily was often difficult, she tended to forget that servants got tired too, but she wouldn’t go so far as
to call her mean. For a brief moment she was tempted to confide in Cissie about Flynn, but good as it would be to pour it all out to someone sympathetic, she knew it wouldn’t help much. Cissie would probably urge her to catch the next boat to Charleston to look for Flynn, and she certainly wouldn’t understand why Matilda was unable to tell her employers about him.

  Cissie didn’t press her any further about the Milsons, but changed the subject to Miss Rowbottom. She appeared to admire and respect the woman in many areas, but she felt she was too hard on some of the children.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, she ain’t cruel or nothin’, and she’s a good teacher, but she just don’t sense when something’s up with the kids, not like you and me would,’ she said, pulling a face. ‘Molly’s been sickening for something for a few days now. I said we ought to send Job over to get the doctor, but she told me it was her job to decide such things, and the doctor’s time was too valuable to keep dragging him over here for nothing.’

  Matilda said she would see Molly before she left, and speak to Miss Rowbottom if she thought there was something wrong.

  It was around four when Matilda found Molly lying on her bed in the girls’ dormitory and she was immediately alarmed. She didn’t think any seven-year-old would choose to stay alone indoors while her friends were outside playing, unless she really was ill, furthermore Molly didn’t even lift her head as she came in.

  ‘Hullo, Molly,’ she said, sitting beside the child. ‘I hear you aren’t feeling too well.’

  Molly’s only response was to cough, an unnatural, hard, dry sound. She seemed to have difficulty in opening her eyes, and when she tried there was yellow matter in them. Her skin felt dry and very hot. Matilda got the child a drink of water and supported her as she drank it, then laid her down again and covered her with a blanket and went back down to find Miss Rowbottom.

  She was in the small classroom with five of the older children and she pursed her lips in disapproval at the interruption. ‘I thought you’d left some time ago,’ she said.

  Miss Rowbottom appeared formidable to most people on first meeting. She was a tall, well-built woman with iron-grey hair and the kind of stern, angular face which suggested she lacked compassion and a sense of humour. It didn’t help that her voice was loud and harsh too. But Matilda wasn’t going to be rebuffed and stated that she’d seen Molly and thought she needed to see the doctor. She offered to call on him as soon as she got back across the river.

  ‘I don’t believe that’s necessary,’ the woman said curtly. ‘Molly is always playing ill, she finds it an excellent way to get attention. I looked in on her an hour ago and I saw nothing to be alarmed about.’

  ‘Perhaps her condition has worsened since then,’ Matilda said equally curtly. ‘I will ask Dr Kupicha to call anyway.’

  It was almost a week later before Dr Kupicha called round to State Street. Matilda had answered the door to him, and she stayed in the parlour with the Milsons instead of returning to the kitchen because the doctor said he wanted her to hear what he had to say too.

  He had been out visiting patients when Matilda called on him to tell him about Molly, but she had left a message, and he had gone the next morning to see the child. He diagnosed measles and removed her at once to the isolation room, organizing one of the maids to nurse her there. Since then twelve more children had come down with it.

  Matilda blanched at this news. Measles wasn’t considered a really serious disease like cholera or smallpox, but back in London she had known it sweep through the tenements like wild fire, claiming the lives of many very young children, and those who survived were often left blind or deaf.

  ‘Measles isn’t easily confined,’ the doctor said hesitantly, looking hard at Giles. ‘The incubation period can be as long as sixteen days, and of course, during that time all the other children would have had some contact with Molly. She is so gravely ill I fear she will die.’

  Lily Milson had greeted the doctor when he came in, and asked if he would like some refreshment, but she hadn’t said a word while he was explaining why he had called, just carried on with her sewing. But suddenly she dropped it from her hands, looking from the doctor to Matilda in horror, and it was clear she’d suddenly realized that it was Matilda who had alerted him the child was ill after she’d visited the Home.

  ‘Matilda was there. What if she brought it home to Tabitha?’ she asked, her voice a frightened squeak.

  ‘That’s extremely unlikely,’ Dr Kupicha said soothingly, moving over to Lily and laying a reassuring hand on her arm. ‘Matilda would have to catch it first before she could pass it on. Besides, you need to be in close contact with an infected person to catch it in the first place.’

  Matilda wasn’t the least alarmed by what Lily had said. She was more concerned about Molly. ‘So how did Molly get it then?’ she asked.

  Dr Kupicha frowned. ‘I was puzzled by that, the Home’s isolation is one of its best attributes. But it seems that over a fortnight ago a large family moving out of New York passed by there and stopped to ask if they could buy milk and eggs before continuing their journey. They stayed some little while and Molly was seen playing with their children.’

  All at once Lily let out an outraged shriek, the kind she made when she saw a mouse or cockroach. ‘You see, you can get it that easily. Matty could have brought it back here.’

  Before the doctor could confirm or deny this, Lily leaped up from the couch, and faced Matilda with blazing eyes. ‘You went near that sick child, didn’t you?’ she spat at her. ‘You fool! How could you put my child at risk?’

  Matilda was reminded of her mistress’s callousness when the child died on the ship coming here. She’d made allowances for it that time, after all Lily had been sick herself, but this time she felt angry. ‘Of course I went near Molly. How could I judge if she was ill enough to call the doctor otherwise?’ she retorted.

  ‘You were only asked to take two children there. Not to poke your nose into sick-rooms,’ Lily shouted at her. ‘And you didn’t tell me anyone was ill when you got back.’

  Dr Kupicha stepped in between them. ‘If Matilda had measles herself as a child, and most have had it, she couldn’t carry the disease,’ he said firmly.

  Matilda couldn’t remember having measles, but she didn’t say so. It was embarrassing enough that Dr Kupicha had to find out that her mistress didn’t share her husband’s compassion for all children in need. She certainly didn’t want him to witness one of Lily’s hysterical turns.

  It was just over a week later that Matilda began to feel ill. It felt like the onset of a cold, her limbs ached and she began coughing. She carried on working and it wasn’t until two days later when the light began to hurt her eyes that she realized to her horror she was going down with measles. Afraid to tell Madam because she had been snappy with her ever since the doctor called to speak about the epidemic, she waited until she was alone in the kitchen with Giles, and told him.

  ‘I’m so sorry, sir,’ she said in little more than a whisper. ‘I know Madam is going to hate me for bringing it into the house. What shall I do?’

  The colour drained from his face and he glanced nervously towards the parlour where his wife and Tabitha were. But then he turned back to her and put a comforting hand on her shoulder. ‘You can’t help it, Matty, it’s just one of those things no one could have predicted. But you must go to bed now, you must be feeling terrible. I’ll tell Mrs Milson and call the doctor.’

  She heard Lily’s outraged shriek just as she climbed into bed, but she felt too ill to care what the woman was saying about her. By the next morning the rash had appeared, her skin felt as if it was on fire, and the cough was much worse.

  Dr Kupicha called in and advised her to sponge herself down with cool water, but apart from drinks and some medicine to ease the cough, there was nothing more he could do. If he knew her mistress hadn’t even been up to see her, he said nothing, and after he’d left Matilda lay crying, feeling utterly abandoned.

  It wa
s Giles who came up later. He stayed outside the closed door, but called out saying he’d left her a cool drink and some soup on a tray if she was able to eat it. She understood he could hardly bellow out sympathy through a closed door, and it wouldn’t have been proper for him to come into her room, but she still felt very aggrieved that she was being treated like a leper. Yet sick as she felt, her thoughts were mainly of Tabitha and she offered up prayers that she wouldn’t catch it too.

  She knew she was on the mend on the third day when she woke to find that her skin felt cooler, the rash was fading and the cough looser. When Giles came upstairs as usual to call out and ask how she was, this time he opened the door a crack, and Matilda was able to ask if Tabitha was showing any symptoms.

  ‘No, thank heavens,’ he said. ‘Her only problem is missing you. She’s been playing her mama up in your absence.’

  Matilda gave a sigh of relief. On the previous day Giles had called out that both he and his wife remembered having it as children so they weren’t at risk of catching it.

  ‘Will that mean Madam will stop being cross with me?’ she asked.

  Giles didn’t answer for a moment, and Matilda guessed he was embarrassed. ‘She’s turned her anger on me now,’ he whispered conspiratorially ‘Yesterday, for some unaccountable reason, Mrs Kirkbright took it upon herself to tell her the grimmer aspects of our orphan rescue scheme. Including some details of Five Points. I’m sure you can imagine how she took that?’

  Matilda could. As she hadn’t heard any crying or screaming she guessed Lily had gone into one of her famous sulks and accused him of caring more for slum children than his own family.

  ‘Well, perhaps it’s best she knows the whole truth, sir,’ she said soothingly, turning around in her bed so she could see his face at the door. ‘You weren’t happy about her not knowing everything. And it’s not as if it’s something to be ashamed of.’