Mourning Doves

by Helen Forrester

  Dorothy’s face looked almost rabbitlike as her nose quivered with apprehension. She turned to obey the instructions, but paused when the cook said sharply, ‘And you’d better put a fire up there. It’s chilly. You can take a shovelful of hot coals from me kitchen fire to get it started quick.’

  The maid nodded, took a big breath as if she were about to run a marathon, and shot away down the stairs to fetch the hot water bottle and the coals.

  As Celia and Winnie half carried Louise up the wide staircase with its newel post crowned by a finely carved hawk, the widow’s cries became heavy, heart-rending sobs.

  ‘She’ll feel better after this,’ Winnie assured Celia. ‘A good cry gets it out of you.’

  Dorothy stood at the bottom of the staircase, hot water bottle under one arm, in her hands a big shovel full of glowing coals, and waited for the other women to reach the top. The shovel was heavy and she dreaded setting the stair carpet alight by dropping a burning coal on it.

  Have a good cry? And what had she in her fancy house to cry about? Her old man had probably left her thousands, and not much love lost between them. And here she was howling her head off and the house up for sale, and never a word to her maids as to what was happening. Proper cruel, she was.

  Would she turn Winnie and Ethel and herself off as soon as the house was sold? And, if not, where would they be going to live?

  As her coals cooled, Dorothy’s temper grew. She plodded up the stairs after the other women, handed the hot water bottle to Winnie, and then skilfully built the bedroom fire, while Winnie and Celia partially undressed the sobbing Louise, removed her corsets and eased her huge Victorian nightgown over her head.

  Behind the blank expression on Dorothy’s pinched, thin face, anger seethed. Winnie must ask the Mistress what was to happen to them. She must! If they had to find new situations, they should start now. Although there was a demand for good domestic help, the big mansions in the country were being closed down in favour of London apartments, and their domestic staffs dismissed; in consequence, a lot of competition faced a middle-aged house-parlourmaid like herself. And it was always difficult to find a considerate employer. She sighed. She had not felt that Timothy and Louise were particularly considerate, but she had become accustomed to them. Ethel, the maid-of-all-work, was young enough to try for a factory job, but she herself was in her forties – getting really old – and Winnie must be nearing fifty – it would be hard for her to get another job of any kind.

  She took fresh lumps of coal from the fireside coal hod and laid them on top of those she had brought up. She ensured that they had caught and that the fire was beginning to blaze and then swept the hearth. Then she got slowly to her feet, and picked up the shovel.

  As she contemplated her future, she began to feel sick. She berated herself that she had not saved some of the good wages she had earned in an ordnance factory during the war years. She had spent like a king until the factory closed down at the end of the war, and then she had come to work as a house-parlourmaid for the Gilmores, because domestic work was all she was skilled at.

  She turned from the fireplace and paused to stare at the scene before her.

  Seated on the side of the bed beside her mother, Celia held a small glass of brandy to Louise’s lips and encouraged her to sip it between sobs. Winnie had folded back the bedclothes ready for the sufferer to lie down.

  Nice woman, Miss Celia – but that useless, you’d never believe it. No spirit. Never had any fun, the Master being so difficult to please, especially so, Winnie said, since he lost his son with that Lord Kitchener, and then Mr Tom in France, poor lad.

  Her own father had been a bit of a cross, she remembered, and not past beating her if she did something he didn’t like – but when he had work, even if he was fair wore out by the end of the day, he could make the family laugh and they’d have a neighbour or two in and do some singing, with a drop of ale to drink by the fire. Old Gilmore had done nothing but complain, complain – and order you around as if you were muck.

  She wondered if Celia’s sister, Edna, was like her. She had never seen her, but she had heard she was a real beauty, and at least, it seemed, she had had enough sense to get out from under her old man by getting married.

  Winnie impatiently glanced back over her shoulder and said, ‘Get downstairs, Dot, and look to the soup for me. Give it a stir. I’ll be down in a minute.’

  Dorothy nodded, and went sulkily down to the basement kitchen, carrying her shovel carefully so that she did not drop a bit of ash on the stair carpet, which, every morning, she had to brush, from cellar to attic.

  Louise finally cried herself to sleep, and an exhausted Celia was persuaded by Winnie to put her feet up on the old chaise longue in the breakfast room at the back of the house, while the cook put together a dinner tray for her.

  ‘The Mistress didn’t tell me what to make for dinner, so I made this nice thick soup, but I’ve got some cold beef, if you feel like something more. And the bread come out of the oven only a couple of hours ago.’

  Celia nodded wearily, and said that the soup sounded lovely. When it was brought to her, she drank it slowly while Winnie stood and watched her anxiously.

  When Celia’s bowl was finally empty, Winnie removed it, and then hesitantly inquired if Celia could tell her what was going to happen to them all. ‘Seeing the For Sale sign was a proper shock, Miss,’ she explained. ‘And Dorothy and Ethel is all upset. They’re asking me what they should do.’

  ‘You should all start looking for new situations,’ Celia answered her frankly, though she did her best to hide her own sense of despair. ‘I know Mother will be glad to keep all of you on for a week or two, while we sort out the house, and decide what to take with us – we are going to live in a cottage in Meols, which Mother owns.’ She paused, and then said rather helplessly, ‘We have no choice but to sell this place quickly, Winnie. And we shan’t be able to afford servants.’ She looked up at the shocked elder woman. ‘I shall, personally, miss you terribly, Winnie, after all the years you’ve been with us, especially through the war.’

  Winnie took a big breath, as she tried to control her own sense of panic. She inquired, ‘Things must be very bad, Miss?’

  ‘In a way they are, Winnie, though not as bad as they might be. Mother’s lucky that my Aunt Felicity left her this cottage by the sea.’ She sighed and fiddled with the fringe of the woollen shawl that Winnie had put across her legs to keep them warm. Then she said in explanation, ‘Father had heavy business debts. We can’t afford a servant – I’m hoping that we shall be able to have a daily cleaning woman – because I don’t think I shall be very good at keeping house!’

  She smiled faintly at the stricken cook, who, despite her own sense of despair, noted that poor Miss Celia was taking it for granted that she would have to run the house – and she probably would have to. And she so small and sickly-looking.

  ‘How long do you think we’ve got, Miss?’

  ‘Well, I haven’t consulted Mother yet. Mr Albert Gilmore, who was here for the funeral, told us that the estate agent felt he would have no trouble selling this house. When it is sold, I suppose that we shall have to set a final date when we have to leave it – to suit the new owner. But we will have to let you go very soon.’ She looked up imploringly at her old friend, as if to ask forgiveness.

  Winnie’s stout chest heaved, but she replied woodenly, ‘I understand, Miss.’

  ‘The other house has to have a few essential repairs done – and we have to get it cleaned – it’s filthy at present.’ She bit her lower lip, and then added quickly, ‘I think that Mother can pay you all for this week – and, I hope, for another week. Tomorrow I’ll talk to her, and we’ll try to make a timetable of some sort, to help you.’

  ‘It’s good of you to be so honest with me, Miss. Can I tell the others?’

  ‘Of course. There is so little time. You should all start looking for other situations immediately.’ She stopped to consider the appalling upheaval
facing her, and then added heavily, ‘I’ll ask Mother to write references for you tomorrow – and if one of you wants to go for an interview on a day other than your half-day, will you arrange it as best you can between yourselves?’

  ‘We will, Miss. Thank you, Miss.’

  Winnie bent and picked up the tray.

  To Celia, her perceptions heightened by her own fears, the cook looked suddenly old as she turned slowly and went out of the room. She watched Winnie quietly close the door after her, and then she began to shake helplessly.

  She clasped her arms tightly round her breast, and rolled herself over, so that her face was buried in the feather cushions which had propped her up. She began to sweat and her teeth chattered uncontrollably, as her fear of the scary world she was having to face and her sense of having betrayed an old friend overwhelmed her.

  ‘Oh, God,’ she whispered in desperation. ‘What’s going to happen to us? Heaven help us.’

  She rolled again, to curl herself up in sheer terror into a tight foetal ball.

  With what was left of her sanity she begged to die.

  But she knew from experience of these attacks of panic that death did not oblige so easily. So in the unnatural silence of the home she was about to lose, she lay as still as she could, and prayed incoherently for release from the blind fear that engulfed her.

  After a little while, her breathing became more normal, and she began to mutter very slowly, as she always did, ‘ “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.”’ She hoped that, if she could concentrate well enough to recite the psalm right through to the end and was comforted by King David’s immortal words, the seizure would ease.

  It had always worked before when she was terrified, even when she was a child and had first realised that she was being brought up differently from her sister.

  Because of her parents’ special interest in Edna’s well-being, she had always believed that their neglect of herself indicated that there must be something wrong with her. Had she some deficiency in her which they were hiding from her? Something weird which would one day spring out and send her mad – or, at least, make her a useless invalid, like a neighbour’s daughter who had been confined for years to a wheelchair by an attack of infantile paralysis?

  This childhood dread, implanted by careless, selfish parents, had fed upon itself until, in her confused, early teenage years, it became an overwhelming terror, which periodically swept over her like some mighty wave whenever she felt threatened.

  Frightened themselves by these seizures, her parents had firmly put them down to that popular female complaint, hysteria. It was the height of vulgarity, an effort to draw attention to herself, they said. They had slapped and beaten her at such times, then locked her in her bedroom, until she saw sense, as they put it.

  The panic would eventually wear itself out, and, exhausted, she would drag herself out of her bed and knock on her bedroom door to plead tearfully to be let out. She invariably promised that it would not happen again, but, sooner or later, it invariably did.

  Now, in adulthood, she had slowly realised that she was probably quite normal. But Church and custom reinforced her parents’ declaration that it was her duty as a good churchwoman and devoted daughter to care for them when they grew old. They had often made it clear to her that she was too stupid to be capable of doing anything else.

  Sundry aged aunts and cousins at various times nodded their grey heads sadly over her and agreed that, since she was so plain and lacking in vivacity, she could not hope to marry. It was better she be the companion of her own dear mother than be faced with the horrors of having to earn a living at something dreadful, like being a companion-help in a strange household.

  She had been devastated as it slowly dawned on her that she had simply been kept single and poorly educated for Timothy’s and Louise’s own convenience, not because they loved her and wanted to keep her by them. Her plaintive request during the war that, like many other women, she be allowed to nurse was met by a threat from Timothy to leave her penniless; nurses didn’t earn anything, he assured her. With two servants deserting the family in favour of working in ordnance factories, Timothy was not about to allow a useful daughter to desert as well. Such was the class distinction that it never once occurred to Celia that she could do precisely what the servants were doing – earn in a war factory.

  Though hopelessly cowed by her parents, she carried under her subservience a terrible bitterness. This week it had been added to by the realisation that, at his death, her father had indeed left her nothing. She was now entirely dependent upon her mother’s whims.

  Once she had understood that she was sane and not particularly unhealthy, she had not had a terror attack again. Like many other middle-class women, she sadly accepted that there was no escape from home. As a result of the war, marriage must now, in any case, be discounted – there were barely any men left for pretty girls to marry, never mind plain ones; they had died, like George and Tom, for the sake of their country; their names would be inscribed on one of the new war memorials going up all over a country which was already finding the wounded survivors an expensive nuisance.

  ‘You can’t marry a name on a war memorial,’ she had complained pitifully to her only woman friend, Phyllis Woodcock, whose husband had proved to be too delicate for call-up.

  Phyllis, who was not very enamoured of the married state, muttered agreement. Like Celia, she had been warned in her youth that, for a single woman who left home, there was no way for her to earn a living except by being a governess or, if one was uneducated, face a fate worse than death by joining the crowds of ladies of the evening all over the city. These sinful hussies were there for even the most innocent, honest women to observe, and it was whispered that they died of horrifying diseases. Just what ladies of the evening did to come to such untimely ends, neither Celia nor Phyllis were quite certain, but both of them were sufficiently scared not to want to try it.

  Once when he came home on leave, George had told her cheerfully that someone had to keep the home fires burning while the men were away, and this had been a small comfort. The walls of the West Derby house became to her at least some sort of defence against the unknown.

  She bowed her head and, with her mother and a group of elderly females, rolled bandages and knitted socks and Balaclava helmets for the troops. Her mother did a lot of organising of sales of work and big balls at the Adelphi Hotel to raise money for the Red Cross, which, for Celia, meant endless writing of letters and running hither and yon on small errands for her mother. She became accustomed to the invisible walls of her prison and to being her mother’s obedient shadow.

  Now, however, the sudden crumbling of the relative safety of her imprisoning walls had frightened her so much that panic had set in again; that open gates might lead to greater freedom for her to do something for herself did not occur to her; long-term prisoners do not always try to escape when the opportunity offers – and Celia was no exception.

  ‘“… and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”’

  The muttering ceased, and she lay still. If she remained very quiet, she comforted herself, God would give her strength. He had to, because there was nobody but herself to look after Mother until Paul and Edna arrived to help her.

  Chapter Six

  Soon after six o’clock the next morning, young Ethel, sleepy and irritable, clumped into the breakfast room. She swung a heavy coal scuttle into the hearth and followed it with a clanking empty bucket in which to carry downstairs yesterday’s cold ashes from the fireplace. The room was dark, except for a faint glimmer of dawn through a crack between the heavy window curtains.

  Suddenly awakened, a bewildered Celia sat up on the chaise longue.

  At the sight of her, Ethel screamed and clutched her breast dramatically. ‘Oh, Miss! You give me a proper fright! Haven’t you been to bed?’

  Celia swallowed, and pushed back her long tangled fair hair, from which all the hairpins seemed to be missing. She laugh
ed weakly as she swung her feet to the floor. ‘No,’ she told the little fifteen-year-old. ‘I was so tired that I fell asleep here on the sofa.’

  Rubbing her hands on her sackcloth apron, Ethel came over to stare at her. She thanked goodness that it was only Miss Celia there, not the Missus. She had not bothered to put on her morning mobcap to cover her own untidy locks, and the Missus would have been furious to see her without a cap.

  ‘Are you all right, Miss?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Ethel. Would you light one of the gaslights? I think it will still be too dark to draw back the curtains.’

  ‘I were just about to do it, Miss, when I seen you.’ Ethel drew a box of matches out of her pocket, and went to the fireplace. After striking a match, she stood on tiptoe to turn on one of the gaslights above the mahogany mantelpiece.

  There was a plop as the gas ignited and the room was flooded with clear white light. Dead match in hand, Ethel turned, for a moment, to stare at her young mistress, before beginning to clear out the ashes. In her opinion, Miss Celia was taking her father’s death proper hard and looked real ill with it.

  She began to hurry her cleaning, so that she could return to the kitchen to gossip with Dorothy about it.

  Celia sat on the edge of the chaise longue, absently poking around the cushions in search of some of her hairpins, while her eyes adjusted to the bright light.

  As she rose unsteadily to her feet, she noticed the silver card plate from the hall lying on the table in the centre of the room. It held a number of visiting cards. Dorothy must have brought it in the previous evening, and it had lain neglected because of Louise’s collapse. Now Celia quickly sifted through the cards.

  They indicated that the vicar’s wife and two of Louise’s women friends had called. In addition, there was a card left by her own friend, Phyllis Woodcock, who had been too far advanced in her fourth pregnancy to come to the funeral. She had scribbled a note to Celia on the back of her card to say that she would try to visit again tomorrow, after the midwife had been to check on her state of health.