by Emily Hahn
“Water-glass eggs are horrible,” said Lorraine. Her eyes were wet.
“Well, for Pete’s sake, what are we to do with your blasted eggs?” I demanded.
Struggling with her emotion, Lorraine looked at me and did not answer.
“I do understand,” I said weakly, “but, really, you make it very difficult.”
She sighed sharply. “I know, I know* but I can’t help it,” she said. “It’s just that I always put so much of myself into a thing. It seems such a waste, cooking with them. To tell you the truth, I don’t even like seeing them eaten for breakfast. Look here, do you mind awfully if I hand the care of the chickens over to Clifton? He knows the routine.”
“It might be better,” I said.
Lorraine bit her lip. She sighed, and then she brightened a little. “I’ve been reading about pigs,” she said. “It’s really a very simple thing, keeping a pig. All you need …”
18. ALICE
Somebody once warned me against the Europeans and Americans I was likely to meet in Central Africa—somebody who must have been naive about the behavior of Europeans and Americans at home. He said, “Many of them are people of rather limited income, who haven’t been able to afford servants where they come from. The novelty of all these servants seems to go to their heads, and they can’t talk about anything else.”
Actually, people seldom talk about anything else wherever you go, colony or no colony. We do it, the Chinese do it, the Indians do it.… I don’t think it is a matter of being unable to afford servants, or of novelty. I think people simply like to talk about servants, and why wouldn’t they? Why not discuss the people who live so intimately with you? Many a housewife sees more of her cook or her charwoman than she does of her mother, and she would be an insensitive clod if under the circumstances she could refrain from being interested in the cook’s, or the char’s, private life. The cook or char usually wants to share her private affairs with her employers, moreover, just as she does with her other friends and acquaintances.
In Dorset, where people know their place, I never expected to find them chatty, but they are. It is not only our domestics who like a bit of a chat. Clerks in shops, gardeners by the day, appraisers, farmers’ wives, piano tuners, they all like to stop and philosophize, and tell you about the war, and show you the latest photograph of the kiddies. At times, when one is in a hurry, this quality of trustful friendliness, while touching, is also damnably inconvenient. There are people who are sensitive to the sidewise glance at the wrist watch, the glaze over the eyes, the reply distrait. There are other people, however, who are not. One way or another, one uses up a lot of time in our part of the country. But Alice, the new housemaid, was no time-waster. Alice kept herself to herself.
She appeared out of the blue, the one and only answer to our three-day advertisement in the local paper, when I had given up hope and was thinking of negotiating for a Dutch girl through the Labour Exchange. Mrs. Clifton was gone, Mrs. Alford had come, but Nellie, on whom the entire job of daily cleaning weighed rather heavily at the best of times, was soon to be out of the running. Nellie had been feeling ill and then worse, and her temper was atrocious. Nellie was only nineteen and criminally ignorant even for her age; just in time to keep Jan from losing his temper completely and beating her up, I had a hunch about Nellie and called the doctor. Yes, Nellie was four months’ pregnant. We had to get another housemaid soon, and we got Alice.
I couldn’t quite understand our luck, for Alice, recently demobilized from the armed forces, was obviously something rare and special in the way of workers. She not only cleaned, but polished everything. She did things without being told. Nellie would always do things if you told her, but she never thought of them on her own; Alice did. Alice was a good cook too; good enough to frighten Mrs. Alford and make her bitchy about giving the girl stuff to cook with. Besides, she was a splendid girl for looks, tall and fair and proud in her ways.
“Where did you get that girl, if you don’t mind my asking?” asked Trivett.
I told him the name of her village. He shook his head. “I hope you won’t take offense, Mrs. Boxer, but if I were you I’d go easy. I’m not saying anything against this one, mind you—it’s a fairly common name. I’ll find out if you like.”
“She’s an excellent housemaid,” I said noncommittally.
“Ah yes, well, if you look at it that way—”
“That’s the way I look at it,” I said.
And, after all, she was not the girl he had in mind. “Thanks just the same for inquiring,” I said.
“Oh, I didn’t exactly inquire direct. I asked around here and there. It’s a good thing you haven’t got one of the others, Mrs. Boxer. Went with those black men at the army huts, some of them did.” He paused and looked at me shrewdly; he felt that he knew his Americans and could gauge their reactions. I disappointed him, muttering flippantly that, as Noel Coward said, it was to be hoped such a practice would end in improving the quality of English teeth. Mr. Trivett was shocked, though he laughed.
“You see, it’s nicer to have someone local in any case,” I said, relenting a little. “Then she won’t start pining for her native London.”
“Ah yes, there’s that, of course.”
“Besides, it’s no joke, Mr. Trivett, finding people who will do an honest day’s work in these times. Alice certainly delivers the goods. Nellie can’t do the heavy work now, of course, and I just had to take whoever came along. It’s our good luck it was Alice.”
For some reason I am always more careful to give what I consider the correct version of things, as I see them, to Mr. Trivett than to people like the Coopers, for example. I suppose I feel the Coopers won’t take it so hard if we happen to disagree. Anyway, Alice took matters into her own hands soon afterward. She brought me my cup of tea one afternoon—she had instituted that little attention out of her own head; before, the Major and I went looking for our own tea of an afternoon—and then she hesitated as she was going out.
“I’d like to talk to you some time, if you don’t mind,” she said, with difficulty holding back the word “madam.” As a salutation, “madam” has not maintained the favor it used to hold in Dorset. Clifton and the other old-timers still say it, but nobody else does. Alice was conscientiously trying to break herself of the manners she had picked up in the Army.
“Why not now?” I said, drinking tea.
“Oh, it can wait.”
“No, it can’t.” I would have been wondering what was in store for us and worrying for days if Alice hadn’t spoken up. She looked all right; I mean she wasn’t tearing a handkerchief or biting her lip or anything, but she sounded tense. “Sit down,” I said, “and speak up, Alice.”
She sat down on the edge of the chair, her backbone like a ramrod. “I’m having a baby,” she said.
“Oh.” We are all selfish beasts, and my first thought was “Not at the same time as Nellie, I do hope.” Then I began to think about other things; for example, I wondered how Alice was feeling about it. She went on talking, telling me without my asking her. Her boy was in the Army, she said, and intended to make it all right, but at the moment he was in Palestine and would probably not get home in time. He had been involved in one of the bomb outrages, though Alice didn’t call it an outrage; she accepted it as a belated part of the war, an act of God. His leg was hurt and might have to be amputated. Under the circumstances, it did not look as if Tommy could make an honest woman of her before The Day.
“I quarreled with my stepmother about it the day I saw your ad,” she said, “and I walked straight over here and took this job. But now I realize I’ll have to tell you before you begin to notice.”
“Oh. How far is it along?”
“Four months.”
“Well.… It’s your own affair, of course, Alice.”
“Thank you—madam.”
“Don’t worry, that’s the main thing.”
She went on sitting straight, looking statuesque. I liked her very much.
“The baby’s the only thing to worry about just now.”
“Oh, I know that.” She showed signs of life at this. “I’ve begun getting things ready.”
“Have you got in touch with the antenatal clinic? You must do that, you know, for the cod-liver oil and orange juice and extra milk. Now let’s see—Nellie’s having hers in September and yours will be in December. Well, that ought to be all right. Nellie’ll be back before you’re out of commission.”
“Thank you,” said Alice, standing up. “I’ll see the district nurse tomorrow, that’s my afternoon off.”
The district nurse, according to a schedule I now knew well because of Nellie, took Alice in to the Dorchester clinic, and Alice came back in a state of indignation bordering on tears. She reported to me: “That woman at the clinic acts as if I ought to be thankful for everything. She says I can’t have the baby in the county hospital.”
“Whyever not?”
“Well, she says they’re crowded these days, but I know it’s because I’m not married.”
“But that makes no difference legally. Thousands of illegitimate children—”
“I know, but it seems there’s a home for unmarried mothers at Parkstone and she thinks I ought to go there. I don’t want to, Mrs. Boxer. They make you stay there four months, two before the baby and two after, and you do laundry all day for your keep. They usually arrange to have the baby adopted. I’ll go home and have it at my stepmother’s before I do that.”
“You most certainly won’t,” I said indignantly. “You’re far too good a worker, aside from anything else, to be doing laundry in a home. The very idea! You can have the baby here if they won’t take you in a hospital. Tell ’em that at the clinic.”
Alice dried her eyes and began to smile. “I’ll do that,” she said.
The weeks went by, and the situation in the kitchen became rather grim and cheerless. Mrs. Alford, a religious type, did not approve, and Nellie was timid and afraid to be chatty under Mrs. Alford’s eye. I would not have known anything about these matters, as Louise had gone, but we now had Lorraine staying with us and Lorraine espoused Alice’s cause with all the warmth of her romantic nature.
Trivett didn’t approve either. He didn’t say so outright, because whenever he approached the question I said firmly, “She’s the best housemaid we’ve ever had.”
“Ah yes,” he always said. “That type always is good at work. Funny, isn’t it?”
Nor did the Coopers approve. “I do hope you’re not let down,” said Ruth.
“How can I be let down? Facts are facts. She’s a good worker and a nice girl; I like her immensely.”
Ruth compressed her lips. Tom looked significant.
“Trivett’s been getting at you,” I said, annoyed. “He’s been talking— Oh, Tom, by the way, I’m very cross with that woman you have at the clinic. She’s going outside of her job, I think; called on us while I was in London and talked to Lorraine about Alice. She said she did hope Mrs. Boxer was going to bring the young man up to scratch. Now that’s a hell of a thing to say, isn’t it?”
“Miss Tanner? Why, she’s a most efficient woman. You’ve no idea how good she is. No doubt she has a forbidding manner, but if you’ve been in social work as long as she has—”
I had already lost my temper, and now I began to show it. “Forbidding, is that all you call it? Why, she’s just an old busybody. A woman like that can do real harm. She—”
“Mickey!” said Ruth. “Don’t be unfair. If you were to meet Miss Tanner I know you’d like her.”
“Oh, you don’t think for a minute she would talk that way to me, do you? It’s so unfair. She’s furious because the state won’t get that four months’ free labor out of Alice, that’s all; every time Alice goes into the clinic she picks at her and says, ‘Where are you going to have your baby?’ It’s none of her damned business where Alice has the baby, since they’ve turfed her out of her turn at the hospital. It’s an outrage, that’s all. Nobody ever made it difficult for Nellie to get her bed reserved at hospital. What’s more, I’ve been looking it up and there’s nothing in the law that says married mothers have priority in hospital beds. It’s—”
“Easy there.” Tom is a government employee; he couldn’t let it pass. “Nobody has priority, but there’s a genuine shortage, and—”
“I suppose you wouldn’t expect them to favor unmarried mothers, in any case?” suggested Ruth.
Over in the corner the Major was grinning openly. It is seldom that I go on the warpath nowadays.
“There is good reason for conventions, surely you admit that,” Ruth was saying. “They’re for the good of the community.”
I nearly tore my hair. I felt strangled. At last, “Oh well, let’s not talk about conventions at all,” I said, swallowing. “Never mind conventions. The fact is, conventions or no conventions, the girl’s pregnant.”
We all said good night soon after, still on good terms, but only just. “Don’t be so childish,” said the Major gently. “By this time you shouldn’t be surprised. It’s a class matter. If Alice were in the upper classes she could do what she likes, but as she’s not, she can’t do anything she likes. That’s about the size of it.”
“Are you really going to have that baby in the house?” asked Trivett in November. “Due just about Christmas, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. That was all.
“You’ll pardon me for asking, Mrs. Boxer, but do you know what a lot of trouble it makes, having a baby in the house?”
“I’ve had lots of babies born in my house in China, Mr. Trivett,” I said. “In a pinch I bet I could deliver one.”
“Oh. Ah. No doubt.”
“Alice’s boy is still abroad,” I said to the Major, “but he may be home by the end of the year. She had a letter today and told Lorraine.”
“Um. What news of Nellie?”
“Still waiting in hospital.” I sighed.
“How long’s she been there? Three weeks, isn’t it?”
“Well, they miscounted or something, and now they’re afraid to let her come back.”
Nellie did come home at last, and of course immediately started having the baby. She got back to the hospital just in time. It was a fine big blond boy.
“Are you really going to have that baby in the house, Mrs. Boxer?”
I sighed, and said patiently, “Yes, Mr. Trivett, I am.”
I was sitting in the back of the taxi, and Trivett drove slower while he talked, but he kept his eyes on the road. “You won’t take what I’m going to say amiss, I hope.”
“No, Mr. Trivett.”
“Well, I’ve made up my mind to speak out. I said to Mrs. Trivett this morning, Tm going to talk straight to Mrs. Boxer, because I don’t think she knows,’ and Mrs. Trivett said, ‘Don’t you meddle in what doesn’t concern you,’ but I said to Mrs. Trivett, Tve talked out of turn to Mrs. Boxer many a time before now, and she never took offense.’”
I made a questioning noise, and he took fresh breath. “Mrs. Boxer,” he said in a humoring sort of way, “you don’t want to have that baby in the house. Not if you can help it. Not right at the Christmas holidays, when as like as not Conygar will be full of guests. Do you, now?”
Something kindly in his tone melted me. “No, of course I don’t, Mr. Trivett, but what else am I to do? They won’t have Alice in the hospital, and that Miss Tanner has been around already to Alice’s mother’s house and upset everybody, saying I won’t keep her after the baby’s come. Alice came back only yesterday, after her day off, terribly upset.”
“You’re keeping her on, then?”
“Of course I’m keeping her on. She’s the best worker we ever—”
“Yes, that sort always are,” he murmured mechanically. It had become a ritual for both of us. Then he remembered his message. “You know how to get round that hospital racket, don’t you?” he said softly.
“No. What do you mean?”
“Why, it’s simple. All you do
is call a doctor in. Engage a doctor for the girl. If a doctor says she’s to go into hospital, she goes. You didn’t know that, did you, Mrs. Boxer? I thought not. I said to Mrs. Trivett only this morning, ‘If Mrs. Boxer only knew, she wouldn’t let a matter of ten or twenty pound keep her from calling in a doctor.’ You see, that’s the law. As a panel patient, Alice gets only what she can get in turn, but as a private patient— Ah, you didn’t know that, did you? That’s just what I said to Mrs. Trivett.”
I was looking at him with love and admiration. “Mr. Trivett, you are a wonderful man. I don’t know what I would do without you.”
“I didn’t think you’d take it amiss,” he said with satisfaction.
“But why didn’t the Coopers tell me?”
“Well, I think I can explain about that.” Trivett drove even slower, and settled himself into his seat. “They don’t exactly approve of the girl being in the house, you understand. Now, I’m not saying a word against her, you understand, Mrs. Boxer. It was all for your own good, do you see. But as I said to Mrs. Trivett only this morning.… Oh, here we are. Good-by, Mrs. Boxer. Don’t mention it.”
“I’m not so sure,” said the doctor from the next village, rubbing his chin and looking worried. “I quite agree with you, of course. I’m new to this district myself, but of course an unmarried mother needs far more gentle handling and attention than— Oh yes, yes indeed. But the fact is, it isn’t so simple at the hospital as I thought it would be. They say the girl’s inclined to be difficult. One must listen to both sides of a question, I’m sure you’ll agree.”
“How do you mean, difficult?”
“She wouldn’t come in for treatment. They wanted her to come in every day for penicillin.”
“She simply couldn’t come in every day. There isn’t a bus every day, and it’s six miles to town. Why did she need penicillin?”
