The True Story of Maddie Bright

by Mary-Rose MacColl

‘Irish, from Ireland. They shot his uncle.’

  ‘I beg pardon?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Are you looking for someone?’

  ‘Mr Waters,’ I said. ‘He’s to meet me in the dining car in fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Rupert!’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh yes, I know who you are. You’re a Bright.’

  ‘I am,’ I said. ‘And not a Fenian.’

  She laughed. ‘Your father is the poet, Thomas Bright.’

  ‘He is,’ I said, perplexed. ‘Thomas Bright, Tom. I’m Maddie Bright. And you’re from Jane Eyre?’

  She looked unsure momentarily then smiled. ‘Oh yes, the name. I’ve never heard that joke before, of course. That’s what threw me.’

  American, that was her accent, I was sure. She was American. My father had described the way the soldiers spoke and it was just like this, as if they’d made the English language either more or less efficient, depending on the word, stretching out the vowels as a general rule and demoting more than a few of the consonants.

  ‘Well, not in recent times anyway, when I’ve been in the company of uneducated men. But as it happens, just like Helen Burns, I am an orphan, although fortunately of independent means and inoculated for typhus.’ She laughed at her own little joke. It took me a moment more to remember that part of the book; Jane’s friend Helen Burns had died of typhus.

  ‘And you’re joining us today,’ Helen Burns went on. ‘Yes, I remember now. Rupert has been called away to some awful business, I should think, given that the prince has been afforded a gun and they sent Ned to supervise. Let’s just hope that the prince shot Ned and not the other way around. Black mark for the tour if we kill the prince. Oh my God, I didn’t really say that, did I?

  ‘I am the other Helen Burns, the one who is not Jane Eyre’s best friend. I am the prince’s assistant dealing with the newspapermen, and I am to welcome you.’ She bowed her head. ‘Welcome to the Royal Tour of His Royal Highness Edward, Prince of Wales, to our dominions, and so on.’ She gestured with her cigarette hand. ‘You may bow low or curtsy now.’ I began to bend at the knees as my mother had taught me. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, I wasn’t serious.’

  She laughed then, such a whoop of a laugh that others around us turned their heads. Looking serious suddenly, she said, ‘Do you take after him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The poet. I mean, you do write?’

  ‘I do,’ I said, delighted to have been asked. ‘I write stories, and I want to be a journalist.’

  ‘Do you really? How marvellous! Just like moi!’ She looked whimsical for a moment. ‘Not poetry? What a shame. But I knew you’d write. I told Ned, she’s one to grab with both hands. I made Ned tell Rupert.’ She looked down at my portmanteau and frowned. ‘Is that all you’ve got?’ she said.

  My bag held almost everything I owned: a grey skirt, a cotton blouse, smalls and an extra pair of shoes, brown. I wore my only coat, black wool, and my other skirt and blouse, blue. My hair was pulled up into a bun ready for a maid’s cap. I wore no hat for I had no hat to wear. I looked nothing like the sophisticated woman before me. All we had in common was curls, and even her curls were better behaved than mine.

  ‘They said uniforms are supplied,’ I said.

  ‘How truly magnificent,’ she said, ‘to be so free. Let’s take you on board then. Are your eyes green?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘I thought so. Lovely.’

  ‘I’m supposed to meet Mr Waters.’

  ‘You simply mustn’t call him that. Both he and I will start looking for his father. He’ll want you to call him Rupert.’

  I knew this was unlikely.

  ‘At any rate, he’s late,’ Helen said, looking behind her down the platform. ‘I’ll show you where he is normally, then we’ll go and find him together.’ She took a last draw on her cigarette and squashed it into the tile with her shoe to extinguish it. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘So you don’t write poetry. I wish you wrote poetry. Couldn’t you try, just for me?’

  I laughed. ‘I don’t think it works like that. Are you a poet?’

  ‘Good Lord, no. I am what’s called a hack. Anyway, you’re young yet. Perhaps the poetry will find you. Your father’s work is extraordinary. You’ve read him, of course.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘when he lets me.’ I thought of Daddy. Rats. All he wrote about now was rats. You couldn’t call it poetry, not even doggerel.

  ‘Does he love that you write?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said, remembering an earlier time, another life really. ‘He used to play this game where we each had to supply the next sentence of a story. Mine were always thoughtful, Daddy said, but my brother Edward was our man of action.’

  It was a game we hadn’t played since Daddy had come home from France, since Edward hadn’t. I had a moment then of wretched despair, the weight of everything, my poor family so brought down in the world, Mummy so desperate to see Prince Edward who would be our king one day, Daddy who’d come home a year ago so changed. And our own Edward, who I couldn’t think about without tears, which pricked my eyes now.

  I felt dowdy in my skirt and blouse, a cardigan I’d had to darn the night before. I felt sudden terrible shame about who I was. ‘I’m not a writer,’ I said to Helen Burns to straighten out any misunderstanding. ‘I’m a servant.’ I said the word servant with some energy, not meaning to be disparaging, just meaning to be clear.

  ‘Well, service is honest work,’ Helen Burns said, smiling warmly. ‘Writing, so often, is not.

  ‘I did not have a father anything like yours, Maddie,’ she said earnestly then. ‘Mine was a stepfather, about which not enough has been written. It’s stepmothers we hate, but stepfathers lurk behind even the best mothers, and their lurking is something we would do well to note.’

  She looked at me and grinned suddenly. ‘Oh, please don’t despair about service, Maddie. For me, it’s just lovely to meet someone who’s not a sycophant. Fresh. It’s fresh. And at least you’re small.’ She giggled then, more quietly than the previous whoop. She looked younger now, a schoolgirl, as if the sophisticated woman was a mask she donned for the world and those who saw her laugh this way saw the real person. ‘I shouldn’t really say that, should I? But David’s a dear little boy, and he doesn’t like big women. You’ll be perfect!’

  ‘David?’ I said, but she mustn’t have heard.

  She looked along the platform towards the line of policemen guarding nothing in particular. ‘Oh God, it’s just so stuffy, the whole thing. I’m sure he’d rather get out on a farm and work than all these stunts they put on for him. I know I would.’

  ‘I went to see him with my mother and brothers,’ I said, realising she must be talking about the prince now. ‘At the town hall. But he’d already left.’

  We had lined up for hours on the holiday for his birthday, hoping to walk past and see him up close.

  ‘Story of his life,’ Helen said. ‘They have him doing this and that and really it’s not in him. He shook over two thousand hands that day. His hand was so bruised they had to fetch the doctor.’

  ‘Goodness,’ I said. I looked about nervously. There were people everywhere now and a growing sense of departure seemed to envelop the platform. ‘I have to say, it’s all come as a surprise,’ I said.

  ‘What has?’ she said.

  ‘The position. I didn’t think I’d be appointed.’

  ‘I dared him.’

  ‘I beg pardon?’

  ‘I dared him to appoint you. I thought it would be fun.’

  ‘The prince?’ I said.

  ‘God, no! He doesn’t have anything to do with it. Rupert told us your name after the interview. Well, as soon as I heard Bright and Brisbane, I knew you must be related to Thomas Bright the poet.

  ‘I was with Vanity Fair at the end of the war, the new American magazine, and we published his poems. Rupert told Ned he couldn’t give you the job on account of your being let go.’ She widened her eyes as if relishing a scandal.

&
nbsp; ‘So I wired your cafe, the one that dismissed you. And then I spoke to the owner on the telephone, Mr Christie. I knew there’d be more to the story. There always is. Ned told Rupert what happened and Rupert thinks you have honour. So do I, for what it’s worth.’ She smiled.

  Just then I saw Mr Waters hurrying along the platform towards us with another man. Mr Waters was unmistakable, even from a distance, those long limbs and that slim frame. He was carrying under his arm a thick wad of papers. His fringe, which he’d kept pushing back the day before, was flopping into his eyes. In his mouth was a pencil. When he reached us, he pulled the pencil out and blew his hair up in an attempt to get it out of his eyes. He was wearing long brown pants with deep pockets, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a brown belt and shoes.

  ‘Helen, you found Maddie, thank you,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you might show her around?’ He smiled at us both. ‘I’ll see you a bit later on, Maddie.’

  The other man looked at me. ‘You’re the tea girl?’

  I nodded. I supposed I was.

  ‘Funny story, that.’ He smiled. It disappeared quickly.

  The other man was the same height as Mr Waters, older by ten or so years, with a moustache that made you think he must have been high up in the army. But he was dressed in a suit with a crisp white shirt and tie, not a uniform.

  He turned to Helen. ‘We’re going over who said what.’

  Helen rolled her eyes. ‘Well, I didn’t say anything. Ned, this is Maddie, and we’re not to call her the tea girl. Also, why aren’t you shooting pigs? I thought you were shooting pigs.’

  ‘Fine.’ He nodded at me. ‘Maddie, I’m Colonel Grigg.’ He turned back to Helen. ‘I sent Dickie to the shoot. I know you didn’t say anything, sweetie, but Halsey has wired the King and Dickie says he’s upset.’

  ‘The King?’

  ‘The prince.’

  Colonel Grigg looked at me briefly again and back at Helen.

  ‘Well, if he wants them to treat him like a prince—’ Helen said.

  Mr Waters held up his hand, the one that held the pencil, to stop her speaking, and frowned in my direction. ‘Very well, Helen. I think that’s probably enough.’

  ‘Did you find a correspondence secretary?’ Helen asked Mr Waters. ‘I can’t keep doing it. I’m sure Ned has made that clear.’

  She seemed brusque with Mr Waters. I wondered why.

  It was Colonel Grigg who replied, ‘Well …’ he said, grimacing, ‘perhaps just a couple of days, to help Rupert out. He’s in a pickle.’

  ‘So you didn’t recruit anyone?’ Helen was looking at Mr Waters.

  ‘No,’ Mr Waters said, looking down towards the platform as if he’d dropped something. ‘I interviewed for the maid job and we got Maddie …’ He smiled at me then. ‘And Maddie, I am very pleased you’re here. It’s just a bit of a morning, I’m afraid. Anyway, Helen,’ he went on, looking at the floor again, ‘we’ve also hired another footman back at the house and a chambermaid. The housekeeper organised those for us.’

  Helen said, ‘You promised you’d get someone after we left Melbourne.’ Mell-born, she pronounced it. ‘I already have a job, remember?’ She turned to Colonel Grigg. ‘And you don’t give me any less work. I have two masters, three if you count H.R.H., and I don’t like any of them right at this moment.’

  ‘Rupert and I met with four candidates but not one of them is what he needs,’ Colonel Grigg said. ‘I agree with him about it, although I have no intention of giving you up.’

  He smiled. I didn’t like his smile. There was something self-satisfied about it.

  ‘Did you forget to mention they have to write like a prince?’ Helen said. She was the sophisticated woman of the world again, I noticed, none of the girl now. She’d quite changed with Mr Waters and the colonel; I would have said she’d become hardhearted, if I’d been pressed to provide a description.

  Around the train there was a good deal of anxiousness to leave: porters carrying trunks into the carriages, guards inspecting various aspects of the platform, railway staff polishing shiny brass and cleaning already clean windows, the engines puffing and panting as if taking a few deep breaths before a race. The pigeons were still wheeling above, as if they might have messages for us but couldn’t find a place to land. The train itself seemed to be shrugging its shoulders, hunkering down to take its load.

  ‘Of course we mentioned it.’ Colonel Grigg looked exasperated. ‘But everyone wants the job. So we had the governor’s cousin’s son, who’s just started at the University of Sydney, followed by the police commissioner’s nephew, and so on. Lovely lads. Not suitable. There’s politics in all this; we have to be careful.’

  All the while the colonel and Helen were talking, I noticed Mr Waters was looking at Helen. Those lovely clear eyes. Hope. That was the impression I was forming of him. He was a soul blessed with hope.

  ‘Are you sure not one of them could do it?’ Helen asked.

  ‘I can show you what they wrote, if you like,’ Colonel Grigg said. ‘The prince was right pleased to get your letter and I hope you’ll be a good boy in future—typewritten suture, as I recall.’ He waved a hand. ‘Poor old Rupert is tearing his hair out. Just look at him.’

  Mr Waters didn’t say anything. Helen didn’t look at him.

  ‘So if you could help, we’d both be much obliged,’ the colonel said.

  I studied him then, Colonel Grigg. I did not find hope anywhere in his features and perhaps this was why I hadn’t warmed to him.

  ‘Well, I’ll do what I can today,’ Helen was saying to him now. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘A thousand times. Come on, Waters—let’s face the music, old chap.’ And they were off.

  ‘It may appear chaotic,’ Helen said as they scuttled away, ‘but I can assure you we run a very tight ship here at H.R.H. H.Q. It’s just busier than anyone thought possible. In Melbourne—’ Mell-born again ‘—more people came to meet the prince than live in the city. Do you understand what I mean? There were more people on the streets of Melbourne than live in Melbourne. How can that even be? At one stage, he had to be carried out of the crowd by a group of soldiers, in fear for his life.’

  I must have looked confused.

  ‘The crush.’ She sucked her cheeks in.

  I laughed. ‘Maybe I should be a Fenian after all.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ she said, mock horror on her face. ‘It was a Fenian who shot poor Alfred, and he was the Queen’s favourite. Victoria’s favourite and your people shot him, Maddie. If it hadn’t been for his rubber suspenders deflecting the bullet …’ She made a cutthroat motion.

  Helen had light blue eyes, and when she widened them as she did now they were awfully big in her small face.

  ‘Alfred who?’

  ‘Prince Alfred. Prince Edward’s uncle. Queen Victoria’s youngest. You don’t know the story?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘He was shot when he visited Australia, at a picnic here in Sydney, by an Irishman, a Fenian. It was all they could talk about when Prince Edward was leaving England. Will the colonists shoot another royal?’

  ‘Well, so far, we haven’t,’ I said. ‘That must count in our favour: we haven’t shot him.’

  ‘Quite,’ she said, regarding me carefully. ‘There’s more to you, isn’t there?’

  Helen led me to the second last carriage and I stepped up behind her into what was a beautifully appointed room, so spacious you wouldn’t believe it was only the width of a train carriage. The wall panels were white with blue trim, and a rich dark red rug covered the floor. There were two desks with chairs at one end and, at the other, leather-upholstered easy chairs with electrical lights on two small tables that added a homely feel.

  ‘Is this the dining car?’ I asked. I wondered where the table was. I could smell tobacco smoke and wood polish.

  ‘Rupert’s office,’ she replied. She pointed to one of the desks. ‘That’s him.’ She tossed her bag onto the other desk. ‘And this is the correspondence secreta
ry. That’s the job they keep trying to get me to do.’ The second desk was a mess of envelopes and papers in various stages of undress.

  She gestured to the door at the rear of the compartment. ‘The prince’s private dining room and beyond that his chamber, where only Dickie can follow.’

  I was still carrying my portmanteau and Helen took it from me and put it down on one of the easy chairs. She pointed to the forward carriages. ‘The other staff offices and the newspapermen. Rupert is here because the prince cannot survive without him.’ ‘And who’s Dickie?’ I asked.

  ‘The prince’s cousin, Louis Mountbatten—eyebrows, perpetually grinning—who’s allowed in to see him. So is Admiral Halsey, actually, if the mood takes him. And then there’s Godfrey Thomas—Sir Godfrey, the principal private secretary, Rupert’s boss—and Ned, Colonel Grigg, who you just met, my boss. You’ll learn. Rupert is the one who steers the ship, despite its many captains. If Rupert weren’t here, they’d never get David to do anything.’

  I looked at the blue door that separated the office from the private dining room. I’d be serving the prince his meals for the trip to Canberra, Mr Waters had said, when he telephoned to tell me I’d been successful in my application.

  Discretion was the main thing, Mr Waters had said in the interview, although Helen didn’t seem at all discreet. ‘We’re a loyal bunch,’ Mr Waters had said earnestly. ‘Do you understand what I mean?’

  ‘I think so,’ I said.

  ‘Really, Mr Waters,’ the housekeeper had said then, ‘I don’t think this girl meets our requirements. A pot of tea, sir, on a guest.’ She had been wanting the interview to come to an end for some time, I surmised, but Mr Waters had kept on with it.

  ‘There might have been mitigating circumstances.’ He turned to me, frowning slightly, fiddling with his spectacles on the table then looking up at me without donning them. ‘You say it was on purpose?’

  I only nodded.

  ‘Did you have a reason?’

  ‘Yes, I did, sir.’

  ‘And are you going to tell us the reason?’ Mr Waters asked.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t think it would contribute to your view of me as discreet, sir.’