The Maltese Angel

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘Yes. Yes, I know.’ The child nodded now, adding, ‘But they are not little. I mean, they are not my size. And, oh yes, Mike remarked that I was growing up too quickly and would outdo my strength. What did he mean by that?’

  ‘Oh, Mike says silly things. It only means that you will be tall when you are a young lady.’

  ‘Will I ever be a young lady?’

  The thought leapt the years and fashioned a young lady before Jessie’s eyes, and the face it presented was not the bright shining countenance of this child, the long-lashed lids, the full-lipped mouth, and the luxuriant brown hair, so strong it had a life of its own and would stay neither in curl nor in plaits.

  ‘Will I, Auntie Jessie, be a young lady some day?’

  ‘Of course you will.’

  ‘Will I marry a prince and live happy ever after?’

  Jessie pulled herself to her feet, saying briskly now, ‘That’s a silly thing to ask. Where did you read that?’

  ‘In one of the fairy tales, Mr Grimm’s.’

  Oh yes, Mr Grimm’s, whose stories to Jessie’s mind were either terrifying or silly…marry a prince and live happy ever after. She was about to turn away when she paused and, pointing an admonishing finger down at Janie again, she said, ‘Promise me you’ll never run off on your own like you did this morning.’

  And now to her amazement her child stood up and dared to say, ‘No, Auntie Jessie, I can’t promise you that, because all the time I want to run, to run away outside the walls and the gate and the railings, everything that keeps me in. And if you won’t take me out sometime, one day I will run away and see the market where Carl goes, and the village where the men go and get drunk. And another thing I must say to you, Auntie Jessie: one day I must see Mama. I must, because she has never wanted to see me. I shall never love her as I do you, but I still must see her.’

  Dear Lord in heaven! Her nine years of incarceration now appeared to be a most senseless thing, for from whomsoever she had inherited her traits, this child had a strength of will and a mind beyond her years. One thing was sure, she did not take after her mother in any way, nor after her grandmother, for she had never shown any inclination to dance as both she herself and Angela had done at a very early age. She had asked if she would ever be a young lady. Well, there was one certainty: she would grow to an age when that term could be applied to her, by which time the truth would assuredly have been revealed in one way or another. And what then would be her reactions? Only God knew. Yes, only God knew.

  She turned to her now and said briskly, ‘No more talk; there’s your lesson on the table. I’m just going to slip across to the house. I’ll not be more than five minutes.’

  As she was taking down a shawl from the wooden rack attached to the inside of the door, she was startled when Janie’s voice came to her, saying, ‘Don’t lock me in, please.’

  ‘I…I mu…’

  ‘If you do, Auntie Jessie, one day I shall climb out through the window.’

  Jessie paused for a moment as she fumbled in her pocket for the key to the door with one hand while groping for the latch with the other, realising that Janie had meant what she said. Without answering her, she dropped the key back into her pocket and opened the door. Closing it behind her, she muttered to herself, ‘Oh, dear Lord.’

  As she made her way across to the house, she recalled how it had come about that only the kitchen now remained as it had been for years; and how, after Annie had died, alterations had been made to the rest of the house.

  Up till then she had kept Janie in her bedroom and shared her time between her and attending to her sister, the latter task being shared by Patsy. But when, later, Patsy had had to take over the kitchen and the housekeeping and had become heavy carrying her own child, naturally she had spent less and less time upstairs. And so the complete burden of Angela’s dumb but effective demands had been left to her to cope with. Until one day it had come to her that if her sister were capable of eating by herself and walking across the room to her chair, then she should be able to wash and dress herself.

  The response from Angela had been a bout of tantrums, during which she had thumped the bedclothes, then gripped the head of the bed, causing her body to stretch out and to become taut and so provide the impetus for her suddenly to strike out at her and to push her almost onto her back, and with such a strength that denied her weak, apparently fragile condition.

  It was then that her own pent-up frustrations had caused her to take her hand and slap her sister across the face, on both sides. And this had had the intended result, for when their father had come bounding into the room she had immediately cried at him, ‘Now you can take over! I’ve had enough. She’s quite capable of helping herself. She’s almost knocked me on my back, all because I suggested she should wash and dress herself. So, there you have it.’ And on this she had run from the room, leaving Ward looking from the screaming figure on the bed to the open door. But having realised at this moment that she had meant what she said, he had rushed after her and caught her just as she was about to enter her bedroom, and gripping her by the shoulder, he had swung her round, saying, ‘You can’t do this! You can’t leave her! She’s sick.’

  ‘Well, you must help in seeing to her, Daddy, mustn’t you? or get help in. And that’s final. And another thing I’ll tell you: if I have to stand this strain much longer I shall walk out of here and you will have that on your hands too.’

  She had then pointed towards the bedroom door: ‘And it will be too late to try to murder it this time, won’t it?’

  He had glanced hurriedly behind him, saying, ‘Be quiet, girl! You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I know what I’m talking about, Daddy, and so do you,’ she had come back at him. ‘And I mean what I say. Now, you can go downstairs and get Patsy to see to her for as long as she can, and then engage a cook to take her place. Now there you have it.’ And she had bustled away from him and into her bedroom, banging the door almost in his face …

  This fracas had resulted in Ward having to do some quick thinking: Patsy would soon be having her child, and what then? Put his beloved daughter away?

  No! No! Never! He couldn’t do that. They would say it was retribution for having had the other one put in the asylum.

  This had led to further pondering and harassed thinking, until he thought he had found a solution. And in a way he had. The next morning he had again called Carl into his office.

  ‘You know what happened last night,’ he had said; ‘and this state of affairs can’t go on.’ And Carl had answered, ‘I can see that, sir, and I don’t know what’s going to happen when Patsy is nearing her time.’

  ‘I’ve thought about all that, so I’ve got a proposal to put to you. If you fall in with it then I will make a statement…an addition to my will…to the effect that you will become part-owner, complete in half, of this house and farm when I die. Should that happen before my daughter Angela goes you would promise to see to her until her demise. And my terms are these: you and Patsy take up your abode in this house. This room could be turned into a bedroom and next door, the dining room, could be put to your use as a sitting room; I myself would eat in my own sitting room. We have too much furniture in the house anyway, but this would not go to waste, for I would install my elder daughter in the cottages. A communicating door between the two could make it into one. That would be her abode.’ He did not mention who would go with her to that abode, but it was plain to Carl, whose face was showing no surprise. And when Ward asked, ‘How do you see this?’ he paused for a long time before answering, ‘It could be done, sir.’ But he did not add his thanks for the offer of the half-share in the house and farm, for he knew his own worth and that there would have been no farm left if he and Patsy had gone when they had first intended to. What he did say was, ‘If that arrangement is to be made possible, sir, you will have to employ someone in the kitchen for cooking and housework. And someone to look after Miss Angela during Patsy’s confinement.’
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  Ward had risen to his feet, but soon made his decision: ‘I will engage someone for the kitchen and the house,’ he said; ‘but with regard to the attention my daughter needs, I shall put it to Jessie that unless she agrees to see to her sister during the necessary time that Patsy will need to be free of her duty, then I will not allow her to continue to live in the cottage, and, if necessary, I myself will do what has to be done.’

  Carl had nodded his head but said nothing, for he was thinking: Yes. Yes, he would do what had to be done for his daughter rather than let a stranger in and note her condition. As Patsy had continually said during the years since the child was born, Miss Angela had become more and more trying and she felt that her mind was being affected.

  ‘Well, Carl, tell me.’ Ward’s voice had changed now: he was no longer the master putting over his proposals and demands in stilted language; he was like a man seeking support as he had added, ‘What do you really think? Will it work? And…and would you be happy to do as I ask?’

  Carl had answered straight away. ‘Yes, sir. I’ll do anything that will ease the situation, and I’m sure Patsy will see it in this way, too. And I thank you for your kind offer. I…I appreciate it, sir. And have I your leave to engage a woman for the kitchen?’ And he had paused for some time before finishing: ‘Of course it will have to be someone from the Hollow. Perhaps McNabb’s wife or daughter. They are clean people.’

  Ward had sighed and agreed. ‘Yes. Yes, go ahead.’

  And so it was that things had gone ahead. The house was altered, and just in time for Patsy’s baby to be born in the room that had been known as the master’s study. But unfortunately it lived only a few hours and this had heralded a further period of childbearing anxiety, for over the previous years she had experienced three miscarriages. Her bright and kindly nature had strained to accept fate, but now it became somewhat embittered, so that she thought as her father did: had they been still living in the cottages this would not have happened. There was surely a curse on this house and all in it …

  Patsy turned from the table as Jessie entered the room and said briefly, ‘You found her?’

  ‘Yes, right down by the far wall. And who do you think she was talking to?’

  ‘I couldn’t guess. But it could only be somebody from the village, and they’d likely appear to her as if they were from another country.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t anyone from the village; it was Mr Gerald and…and his mother, from the Hall.’

  Now Patsy stopped placing an assortment of cooking utensils on the table as she said, ‘Oh, aye? Well, me da said he was back for the funeral. So he didn’t turn out like all the rest. It must be worse up there than it is here, for they’ve only got two inside the house now, I understand, the old cook and the maid. My! my! Even I can remember when the place was overrun with servants. But that’s life.’

  ‘What am I going to do with her, Patsy? I mean to…to prevent her roaming?’

  ‘Well, if she really wanted to roam she could walk out the gates, couldn’t she? It’s the only place that isn’t barred or walled. I’ve wondered she hasn’t done it afore.’

  ‘She’s been warned not to.’

  ‘Huh! She’s also been warned not to roam.’

  Patsy dusted her hands one against the other, and now looking on Jessie, as Annie might have done, and not unkindly, she said, ‘Sit yourself down. There’s a cup of tea in the pot.’

  ‘I…I don’t want any tea, Patsy,’ Jessie said as she sat down. ‘But what am I going to do with her? She has openly defied me. When I asked her to promise not to roam again she said she couldn’t, and…and then she told me not to lock the door on her. She’s only nine, but the way she’s talking now she could be…Oh!’ She shook her head. ‘She’s so intelligent, far above her age, so alive, so wanting to know.’

  ‘Well, it’ll get worse not better, you know that. She’ll be asking real questions shortly. Oh my!’ She turned to the table and picked up the rolling pin, then laid it down again as she said, ‘You should take her away out of this altogether. He’s got enough money…’ It was noticeable that her reference was to neither ‘the master’ nor ‘your father’, but to ‘he’. ‘He’s got enough money to let you live comfortably somewhere else. You could ask him to advance some of your share in the place.’

  Jessie was gazing down on her locked hands lying on her lap and she knew what Patsy said was the solution. But as much as the child wanted to roam away from this place, all she herself wanted to do was to stay here. This was her home: it had always encased her, and she wanted it to go on. And then there was Carl. The thought of not seeing him some part of every day was unthinkable to her. The fact that Patsy hadn’t provided him with a family seemed, in a strange way, to have left him free. She rose abruptly from the chair, saying, ‘Daddy would never agree to that. I doubt if he would give me a penny, even if it meant keeping me from starving. I have a feeling that he begrudges me my food because I share it with her.’

  Patsy did not contradict her; all she said was, ‘In that case, you’ll have to keep a wider eye on her. But you won’t do it by locking her up, for she’s a determined miss if ever there was one.’ She didn’t add, ‘I wonder from which one she’s got it?’ Rather, she thought, God help her.

  Two

  It was on the evening of 28 July 1914, that Lady Lydia put down the newspaper and went in search of her son. She found him in the stables rubbing down their latest acquisition of the new venture, which was a horse.

  ‘Gerald! Gerald!’

  ‘Yes? Yes, Mama? What is it?’ He turned to her, and when she thrust the paper at him, she said, ‘You were right. It’s come. Austria’s declared war on Serbia and Russia is mobilising.’

  After he had scanned the newspaper headlines, Gerald said, ‘Well, they’ve waited a full month, longer than I thought, since they did their dirty work at Sarajevo, when they murdered the heir to the throne. Now we will just have to wait and see what Russia and Germany do. It won’t be long; a matter of days, I should imagine.’

  ‘Oh, dear me, dear me. What will you do?’

  ‘Mama! Mama! Come along. Stop worrying.’

  ‘I can’t help it. Oh, Gerald, if you would only see things differently.’

  ‘Now, now. You go in the house this minute and I’ll join you after attending to my friend here. Betsy is hungry. She’s had a hard day.’

  ‘I…I don’t know how you can take things so lightly, Gerald, when…’

  ‘Get away, woman! Do you hear me? And take this rag with you.’ He pushed the newspaper back into her hand.

  When, a few minutes later, he returned to the house, she met him in the hall, saying, ‘A meal is on the table.’

  ‘Well, let me get some of this dirt off me and I’ll be with you. Five minutes.’ He held up a hand before her face, the fingers spread.

  ‘That means fifteen to twenty; then it will be stone cold.’

  ‘Look; get yours and put mine in the oven. Or I’ll do it myself now.’

  As he made towards the dining room she caught his arm and said, ‘No; no. Please! You know how cook can’t get over you messing about in the kitchen; and if you start pushing her dinners back in the oven…Oh, dear, dear! Go and get your wash, and be quick. I mean it, mind, be quick!’

  He was laughing as he ran up the stairs; but there was no laughter on her face as she turned towards the dining room. The prospect of war meant trouble for him because he was so outspoken in his views. All this would happen, wouldn’t it? when he was making such a go with his business ideas with regard to the smallholding. He and McNamara, together with the odd-job helper, had worked wonders in less than a year, aided by the new inhabitant of the stables, a horse, albeit neither a racer nor a hunter, but one that could certainly pull a cart. And it had pulled some carts of fruit to the market this summer. So much so, it had made her wonder what had happened to all the fruit in previous years. Of course, then there had been a much larger staff, and as Gerald had finickally pointed out, the
staff at Buckingham Palace could not have gone through half the amount they had managed to sell this year alone. So he would give her two guesses as to what had happened to it. And then he had answered for her. It had likely found its way to the market but through different channels.

  Oh, she knew there was always a kind of pecking order in all households such as theirs had been. And often the hierarchy among the servants would have their appropriate pickings from bonuses, depending on the size of orders. She remembered her father saying years ago that whatever was lost in that way was worth it to keep a happy staff. And he had added that the quartermaster’s store should be left to the quartermaster, the implication in their case, she knew, meaning the butler. And her thoughts remained with her early days, those days even before she was brought out in London that were so gloriously happy; and she asked herself yet again, as she had done many times over the years, would she have married Bede if she hadn’t still been feeling the hurt of breaking off her engagement with Raymond after she found out about his mistress? She doubted it, Bede being twenty years her senior and with a grown-up family. He had spelt security, a shield from a dirty world. She had been very naive in those days, hadn’t she? Yet what was a young girl to think when her future husband showed no intention of giving up his mistress, on the excuse that it was nothing to do with love; he loved her, he said, and perhaps after marriage things might alter. But couldn’t she understand the situation?

  No; she hadn’t been able to understand the situation. And she still didn’t. So perhaps she had remained naive.

  ‘You’re a silly woman. Why have you not yet started on your meal? I have been seven minutes; I timed myself.’

  When he sat down and took the cover off the plate he sniffed and said, ‘It smells good. I could eat a horse…but never Betsy. You know, I’m very fond of that old girl. She has worked, hasn’t she? She’s been a godsend. Oh, my dear.’ He put down his knife and fork and, leaning across the corner of the table, he placed his hand on hers, saying, ‘Don’t look like that. It may never happen. I mean, conscription. And it won’t come about right away. There’ll be dozens, hundreds of them flying to the Colours, all brave fellows dying to be butchered. Oh, I’m sorry.’ He picked up his knife and fork again, and in a more sober-like voice now he went on, ‘Anyway, dear, it’s nothing new; conscription’s been going on, well, practically down the ages in other countries. They used it in America during the Civil War, and it started in France sometime in the seventeen-hundreds, as far back as that. It’s nothing new, I tell you.’