Gypsy

by Lesley Pearse

  The woman led her to the back of the house to a small, simply furnished room. Beth got the idea it was her room, for she’d caught a glimpse of the drawing room as she walked down the hall and that was very grand, with fancy carpets and lovely couches and armchairs.

  ‘Sit down, please,’ the woman said. ‘I’m Mrs Bruce, Mrs Langworthy’s housekeeper. How old are you?’

  ‘Sixteen, mam,’ Beth said.

  ‘And do you have a character?’

  Beth had no idea what she meant by that.

  ‘A letter from your last employer?’ Mrs Bruce said rather tersely.

  ‘I had to leave the hosiery shop where I worked in a hurry,’ Beth said, and breathlessly explained that her recently widowed mother had died in childbirth. ‘I couldn’t go back to my position at the shop as I had to stay home and take care of my little sister.’

  ∗

  Beth was peeling potatoes for the evening meal, with Molly, propped up against some cushions in a wooden box beside the sink, gnawing on a crust of bread, when Mr Filbert, the man who ran the shoe shop downstairs, called up to her. ‘Miss Bolton, a young lad has just brought a letter for you!’ ‘I’ll be right down,’ she called back, rinsing her hands and drying them on her apron. She felt certain the letter could only be to turn her down, but at least Mrs Langworthy or her housekeeper had been polite enough to write.

  ‘Not bad news, I hope?’ Mr Filbert asked as Beth stood in the doorway through to his shop gasping at the contents of the letter she’d just opened.

  ‘No,’ Beth said, looking up at him with a broad smile. ‘Quite the opposite.’

  She could hardly wait for Sam to come home to tell him the good news. Mrs Langworthy wanted her to start in the morning. She suggested that Beth work two five-hour days, as she thought this would make it easier for her to arrange for someone to take care of the baby. And she was going to pay her ten whole shillings! Beth had only got seven shillings and sixpence for working all week at the hosiery shop.

  ‘Our luck has finally changed, Sam,’ she yelled exuberantly the minute her brother came in. His face broke into a wide smile and he hugged her.

  ‘Mrs Bruce must have fallen for your charm,’ he insisted when she told him how she thought she’d talked too much. ‘I just hope Mrs Craven doesn’t get fed up with minding Molly.’

  ‘She said she’d be glad to have her,’ Beth said. ‘She isn’t any trouble anyway, and I’ll give her a shilling a day.’

  ∗

  All Beth knew of how gentry lived was from what her mother had told her of her experiences in service, but she was fairly certain right from the first day at the Langworthys’ that it was a most unusual household.

  She arrived at eight as arranged, and Mrs Bruce offered her a cup of tea and some toast in the basement kitchen. ‘You can’t work on an empty stomach,’ she said, ‘and I’m fairly certain you rushed here without a bite. Now, we’ll wait until Mr Edward, that’s the young Mr Langworthy, has left for the office and I’ll take you up to meet the mistress.’

  Twenty minutes later, Beth was in the dining room on the ground floor where Mrs Langworthy was having her breakfast. It was at the back of the house overlooking a yard, next to the housekeeper’s sitting room where Mrs Bruce had taken her the previous day.

  Beth was surprised by Mrs Langworthy. She had expected someone middle-aged and grey-headed, not a relatively young woman with flaming red hair, sparkling green eyes and such a warm smile.

  ‘Welcome, Beth,’ she said, getting up from the table and offering her hand. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here to meet you yesterday, but Mrs Bruce told me all about you and your circumstances. I am so sorry to hear of your recent loss, and I do hope your little sister won’t mind me sharing you with her.’

  Beth was so staggered at that unexpected warm greeting that for once she was tongue-tied. She shook her new mistress’s hand and looked at Mrs Bruce for guidance.

  ‘Molly is with a neighbour who she is well used to,’ Mrs Bruce explained.

  ‘Then I’m sure she’ll be quite happy,’ Mrs Langworthy said. ‘I’ll let Mrs Bruce show you around and tell you what’s needed today. I have to see to my father-in-law now, but I shall see you later in the morning.’

  A small, slender, dark-haired Irishwoman in her twenties was making the bed in Mrs Langworthy’s bedroom, which overlooked the square. Mrs Bruce introduced her as Kathleen and explained once they left the room that Kathleen lived in and had a room up on the top floor. ‘She is a general maid — she does all the cleaning and lights the fires. We have a cook who comes in daily, you’ll meet her later, and then there’s myself. Just a small staff, but the Langworthys don’t entertain much, and of course Mrs Langworthy takes care of old Mr Langworthy.’ Mrs Bruce indicated the other room at the front of the house and explained that was his room.

  ‘This is Mr Edward’s room,’ she said, opening a door at the back. It was starkly masculine, with a vast, highly polished mahogany wardrobe, its own washbasin with brass taps and a large bed, already made and covered with a heavy dark blue quilt. ‘The bathroom,’ she said, opening the next door. ‘One of the beauties of this house was that it was built with modern facilities.’

  Beth had never seen an indoor water closet before, only pictures of them in magazines, and couldn’t resist saying so.

  ‘Neither had I until I came to work for the Langworthys.’ Mrs Bruce smiled. ‘There is another water closet on the ground floor too, along with the one in the backyard.’

  The final room was a guest room. Mrs Bruce said her own bedroom was up next to Kathleen’s.

  Mrs Langworthy’s clothes, which it would be part of Beth’s duties to take care of, were in a dressing room off her bedroom, but the housekeeper said that for today she wanted Beth to do only laundry.

  It wasn’t until they got back to the basement, having viewed the large drawing room which took up half the house from front to back, and Mr Edward’s study, a small room also looking out on to the square, that Beth realized she wasn’t going to be paid so well for doing nothing.

  The laundry room had its own door out to the yard, with two big white sinks, another low one which was called a sluice, a mangle and a large gas boiler, which had to be lit from underneath.

  There was a big basket of sheets smelling strongly of urine, which had to be boiled, and then Mrs Bruce lifted the lid on an enamel pail to reveal soiled napkins.

  ‘Try and think of this as no worse than your Molly’s,’ she said, even though she had her nose turned away to avoid the horrible stench. ‘Rinse them off thoroughly in the sluice, then they must be boiled with the sheets. There will be other washing, though there is none today, but I want you to remember that old Mr Langworthy’s linen goes in the boiler alone, after everything else has been done.’

  ‘How long do I boil it for?’ Beth asked, trying not to gag at the very thought of what was in the pail.

  ‘Twenty minutes to half an hour,’ the housekeeper said. ‘While it’s boiling you can wash any delicate items by hand in the sink.’

  ‘Mrs Langworthy has to change him?’ Beth just had to ask. She couldn’t imagine anyone as lovely and well bred as her doing such a thing.

  ‘Yes, she does, Beth. He always was a difficult man, even before he had his stroke. But since then he’s become very much worse because one side of him is paralysed and his speech and sight are impaired. We’ve had dozens of nurses here over they ears, but he frightens them away. Mrs Langworthy is the only person he allows to touch him, and she has the patience of a saint. She should have children, friends visiting and a life of her own.’ Mrs Bruce stopped abruptly and blushed. ‘I shouldn’t have said that.’ She sighed. ‘It’s just…’

  ‘That you get angry for her?’ Beth ventured.

  ‘Yes, Beth.’ Mrs Bruce nodded. ‘But I spoke out of turn.’

  ‘I won’t repeat what you said,’ Beth said as she turned on the tap above the boiler to fill it. ‘She was good enough to give me work when I needed it. For that you bo
th get my loyalty.’

  ‘So what’s it like?’ Mrs Craven asked eagerly when Beth returned in the early afternoon.

  Beth picked Molly up from the rug she was sitting on and tickled her till she laughed. ‘Mostly wonderful,’ she said. ‘It’s a beautiful house, they’ve even got a water closet inside. But I wish old Mr Langworthy could use it.’

  There weren’t words to describe how disgusting she found sluicing out those napkins. She gagged and retched, hardly daring to breathe, they smelled so bad. She wondered how nurses managed to cope with such things day after day, and if she could ever get used to it and not mind any more.

  But she’d told herself as she walked home that the horrible part only lasted some twenty minutes at most, which left four hours, forty minutes of pleasant duties. She didn’t mind rinsing and putting the clean linen through the mangle. Hanging it up to dry out in the yard was lovely. And she’d spent the last hour darning Mr Edward’s socks while she sat in the kitchen chatting to Mrs Cray, the cook, and Kathleen, the soft-spoken Irish maid. What’s more, she’d had a huge slice of delicious meat pie for her dinner, and Mrs Cray had given her a couple of pasties to bring home.

  ‘You can get used to anything in time,’ Mrs Craven said philosophically. ‘And I loved having Molly, so it’s good for both of us.’

  ∗

  Mrs Craven was right. Beth found she did get used to washing those napkins. Or maybe it was just that the good parts of the job heavily outweighed the bad. It was nice to get out twice a week, to have other people to talk to, and to know she was helping Sam keep things going.

  She didn’t see much of Mr Edward. He had usually left for his office around the time she arrived, but on the odd occasion she ran into him she found him pleasant enough. He was tall and slender, with thinning sandy hair and a military-style moustache, at least ten years older than his wife. He struck Beth as a studious, quiet man who took life very seriously.

  Mrs Langworthy was quite the opposite. She was so kind and merry, and always found time to come and find Beth for a little chat. She loved to hear about Molly, and it was clear she wished she had a child. She had a wonderful ability to hold her position as the mistress of the house yet empathize with those who worked for her. Beth understood why Mrs Bruce was so devoted to her, and she resolved that if ever she found herself in a position to have servants, she would model herself on this admirable woman.

  It seemed as if Sam’s and Beth’s fortunes had finally turned, for just a week later they found two new lodgers, Ernest and Peter, both respectable young men who worked for an insurance company and were friends.

  Sam thought it better for Beth that the lodgers should have the two rooms upstairs and so he moved down to the parlour. Right from their first night the young men proved to be ideal lodgers, polite, tidy and sensitive towards Beth and Molly.

  They were both keen cyclists, and every Sunday they went out with a cycling club for jaunts into the countryside. They ate whatever Beth put in front of them, they were grateful she did their washing, and neither of them drank. Sam enjoyed their company, and often in the evenings the four of them played cards together. Sometimes they begged Beth to play her fiddle and clapped their hands and tapped their feet to accompany her. Those were the best nights of all because for a couple of hours all her cares fell away with the music and she felt as free and untroubled as a bird.

  It seemed to Beth, too, that Sam was actually growing fond of Molly at last. Sometimes, if he came in from work and she was sitting on the floor, he’d bend down and pat her head, as Ernest and Peter often did. Beth didn’t say anything — she was sure that if she did remark on it he would never do it again — but she’d watch him out of the corner of her eye and note that he was playing peekaboo with Molly, or tickling her to make her laugh.

  One evening in August after Beth had put Molly to bed, she’d gone across to see Mrs Craven for a few minutes and came back to find Sam holding the little girl in his arms.

  ‘She woke up crying,’ he said defensively. ‘I thought she might have a tummy ache.’

  The following day when she had to go to Falkner Square Beth felt like skipping the whole way, she was so happy. Later that morning she was in the little room off the kitchen where they kept the sewing machine, singing as she turned some worn sheets sides to middle and sewed them up again, when Mrs Langworthy came in.

  ‘And what has turned you into a little songbird?’ she said with a wide smile.

  ‘I’m just feeling happy because my brother seems to be getting fond of Molly at last,’ Beth admitted. ‘We had so many problems after our mother died, you see. It was difficult for him to accept Molly.’

  ‘I don’t think men have that instant love for babies that women feel,’ Mrs Langworthy said thoughtfully. ‘Many of my friends have told me their husbands showed no interest at first. It must have been harder still for your brother, you both being so young.’

  Beth chatted on about their two lodgers, and how Sam seemed much happier lately. ‘He hasn’t even mentioned emigrating to America for ages,’ she said.

  ‘Would you have liked to do that?’ her mistress asked.

  ‘Well, yes,’ Beth replied. ‘What an adventure it would be! But it wouldn’t be possible with Molly, would it? I’d have to work too if we wanted to make a real go of it. Without any friends or family there we’d have no one to mind her.’

  ‘It seems a shame to me that you and your brother have to sacrifice your dreams or ambitions,’ Mrs Langworthy remarked, and patted Beth on the shoulder in sympathy.

  One hot, sunny Saturday right at the end of August Sam came home from work and suggested they should catch the ferry to New Brighton the following day. Ernest and Peter were planning to go out early on their bicycles, and as they had already said they wouldn’t want any supper as they were eating out, it meant Sam and Beth wouldn’t have to rush back.

  Beth was thrilled at Sam’s suggestion, not only because she had so many good memories of going to New Brighton for the day with their parents, but because he was including Molly.

  ‘Put on something pretty,’ he suggested. ‘You’ve been in mourning for quite long enough. It’s time we had some fun.’

  Just a week or two before, Beth had gone through her mother’s clothes to see what could be sold, or altered to fit her, and she’d found tucked away at the bottom of the cupboard the pale blue and white striped dress Mama had been wearing in the photograph. Beth had been longing to wear it, for it was very pretty, with a lower neckline than she usually wore, leg-of-mutton sleeves and a pin-tucked bodice. She’d had to let the waist out a fraction and drop the hem an inch or two, but it fitted everywhere else perfectly.

  ‘You look lovely,’ Sam said appreciatively when she came into the kitchen on Sunday morning, ready to leave.

  Beth was quite giddy with excitement, for with her hair left loose and a pert little straw boater perched on top at an angle, she felt quite the young lady of fashion. Molly seemed to pick up on her excitement for she began laughing and clapping her fat little hands as Beth carried her downstairs and put her into the perambulator.

  As they turned into Lord Street to make their way down to the docks and the ferry, Sam was clearly equally excited, for he began playing games with Molly and making her laugh as he walked along beside the perambulator.

  There were hundreds of people making their way in the same direction. New Brighton, with its sandy beach, carousels, donkey rides and promenade, was a popular day out for working people.

  It was the best day ever. They ate ice cream, candy floss, shrimps and meat pies, and they laughed uproariously at Molly who wanted everything they ate. She was so greedy for the ice cream that she almost stood up to try to reach it, and it became daubed all over her face.

  They took off their boots and paddled, rode the carousel with Sam holding Molly in front of him, and Beth won a jar of bull’s-eyes on the hoopla stall. Sam tested his strength and only got the indicator to rise as far as puny, while other lads far sm
aller than him were making the bell ring. But he did win a coconut on the coconut shy. They had their photograph taken in a booth on the beach too. They had to queue for ages while the mothers in front of them turned to their grubby children and wiped their faces with a spit-dampened rag and pulled combs through unruly hair.

  Beth found it hard not to laugh when she finally got into the booth and was told to sit on the chair with Molly on her lap. Sam stood behind, one hand on her shoulder. The background scenery was of a castle and a lake. She wondered if one day in years to come Molly would look at the photograph and ask where that castle was in Liverpool.

  It was almost eight before they arrived home, and Sam’s sunburnt face was the colour of a lobster. ‘I’ll make some tea while you put Molly to bed,’ he said and bent to kiss the little girl as she lay sleepily in Beth’s arms.

  That was the crowning moment of the day for Beth. It might have taken eight months to come, but it was all the sweeter for knowing he hadn’t done it out of duty, but real affection.

  ‘You little charmer!’ Beth whispered to Molly as she took off her clothes and napkin to wash her. ‘You finally won him round.’

  Beth stayed in the kitchen long after Sam, Ernest and Peter had gone to bed. She thought how good it had been to see Sam laughing again, to feel hope for the future in her own heart, and a certain pride that she’d done so well at being a stand-in mother for Molly. Molly’s dark hair was curly now, her cheeks like little apples, and a great many people had stopped to admire her today. Soon she would be walking and talking too. Beth smiled as she remembered how frightened she’d been that night she was born and Mrs Craven said she must take care of her. But she’d done all right and so had Sam.

  ∗

  Beth woke up suddenly, and finding she was very hot, she sat up to push the blankets back to the foot of the bed. She didn’t think she’d been asleep long for she could still faintly hear drunks in Church Street. But as she turned her pillow over and lay down again, she heard a sound out in the back alley.