The Sewing Room Girl

by Susanna Bavin

  She heard Doctor Entwistle leave, then Beatrice and Juliet came upstairs.

  Beatrice sat beside the bed. ‘Doctor says there’s a decision to make. Wherever you sleep next, here or in the daybed, that’s where you’re stopping.’

  ‘You mean I’ve to choose where to die,’ Agnes stated bluntly. She was careful to fold her lips over her teeth when she finished speaking. Her flesh might be diminished, but her teeth weren’t. They felt as big as gravestones.

  ‘No,’ Juliet cried, ‘it’s so you don’t have to manage the stairs.’

  Beatrice placed a steadying hand on Juliet’s arm. ‘Aye, that’s about the sum of it, Agnes. Don’t go making it worse for the lass.’

  ‘I reckon I’ll stay here, then,’ she said.

  Cecily felt torn in two. Training as a lady’s maid knocked spots off laying fires and making beds, but she missed William badly and she was worried about Juliet and her mum. Mr Nugent had informed his lordship in one of his letters that Mrs Harper was nearing the end, and word had filtered down to Cecily. She wished she could be there to give her friend a hug. How must she be feeling, poor love?

  Cecily had written a couple of letters, one to Mam and one to Juliet, but she wasn’t much of a writer. She could talk like nobody’s business, but put a pen in her hand and the words dried up. She had heard back from Juliet, a short letter, not saying much, but that was just as well, really, since maids’ letters were opened and read by Mrs Goodwin, who was the Mrs Whicker of the London house. Even so, Cecily felt let down. She had imagined Juliet would be a fluent letter writer. And just what did she mean by I have something important to tell you, but it can wait until you come back, eh?

  Not that Cecily had time to dwell on it. Miss Phoebe and Miss Marchant between them kept her on her toes. When she wasn’t dressing her young lady or putting up her hair, she was removing stains under Miss Marchant’s eagle eye or making bath salts or religiously following Miss Marchant’s grandmother’s recipe for hand whitener.

  She worked more hours than she used to, because she was required to wait up for Miss Phoebe and see her to bed, and as the Drysdales had apparently come to London purely to go out every night, Cecily seldom sank into her own bed before midnight. Any disadvantage attached to this, however, was made up for by the delight of handling Miss Phoebe’s beautiful clothes.

  ‘You won’t know yourself when you get home, miss,’ Cecily ventured as she helped her young mistress into an afternoon dress of shell-pink silk trimmed with dainty ruffles. ‘Moorside will seem very dull after this.’

  Cecily’s heart skipped a little faster. Miss Phoebe might be going home to a quiet life but Cecily wasn’t. She was dying to be reunited with William.

  ‘We’re not going home,’ said Miss Phoebe. ‘We’re going to the Isle of Wight, and after that to my aunt and uncle in Hertfordshire. We shan’t be home for simply ages.’

  Having Mother in bed all the time nearly made Juliet’s heart crack down the middle at first, but soon it became normal. Each night, Juliet heaved herself out of bed several times to see if Mother was awake and if she needed anything, and each morning, she woke with the heavy-headed feeling of not having slept soundly. Her bones creaked under the weight of dark despair, a feeling so intense it made her nauseous.

  All at once she had to fling aside the covers and make a dive for the wash bowl to be sick. Vomit raced up her gullet, hot and sour, and whooshed out of her with astonishing speed. Afterwards she dipped her face cloth into the jug and dabbed her face.

  That was her one moment of weakness. Now she had to be strong. She drew in a deep breath. She wouldn’t let Mother down.

  It was better to concentrate on Mother than on … anything else. If she immersed herself in Mother’s care, she could avoid thinking of … other things. She had written to Cecily, a letter that had taken several days to compose, because … well, just because. She had to warn Cecily about William Turton, but she couldn’t put it in a letter. Even if Cecily’s letters weren’t read by the Drysdales’ London housekeeper, she still couldn’t have committed such a vile incident to paper, so she simply made a vague remark about having something to say when Cecily returned. Should she have blathered on about other things? Pretended her letter was an ordinary letter?

  Neither could she write to Hal in any meaningful way. Remembering those long, chatty letters she had planned to send him every few days made her feel weighed down, as if her body was too heavy to move. Instead of bombarding him with bright, loving missives as she had intended, she wrote only in reply to his letters and cut her own short by saying she had to get back to Mother.

  The days passed in a haze of weak soup, pain-dulling medicine and bed baths that, no matter how gentle you were, always resulted in Mother’s being crotchety and tearful. Oh, and chamber pots. Poor Mother. When had she last visited the earth-closet? Now she was reduced to using chamber pots, like old Mrs Dancy. She wept from sheer humiliation at first, but then, like everything else, it became normal, or maybe she was too exhausted and pain-riddled to care. Her skin, stretched tight across her bones, turned yellow with jaundice, making her faded fair hair look dirty.

  Juliet barely left the cottage. From Mother’s window, she saw the wood anemones fade, replaced by the pink bells on the foxgloves’ tall stems. Hal’s letters were full of the private garden in a fancy London square, where he was not only being trained by Mr Clayton in matters of design but also – typical Hal – mucking in with the physical labour. His letters left her heart beating with a dull thud that turned her blood to sludge in her veins. She was no longer the girl he had left behind. William Turton had violated not only her body but every corner of her mind. He had violated her future. How was she ever to tell Hal? A tremor passed through her body. She could never tell anyone.

  Was there something about her that made others feel free to mistreat her? Mr Nugent molested her and she had to let him, because she was grateful, but she didn’t feel grateful – she felt dirty and degraded and stupid, stupid, stupid. Was it her own fault for letting him? Should she have said ‘No’, loudly and firmly, the very first time? Too late now. Then again, what was a bit of groping compared to what William Turton had done? ‘Love from Rosie’. Rosie had never forgiven her for that mistake over Hal’s identity. Was she to blame for the attack on Rosie?

  ‘The poor lass is under such a lot of strain,’ murmured the village women. ‘You can see it in her eyes.’

  And that made her feel like a cheat and a liar. They thought she was beside herself with worry over Mother, and she was, but it was degradation that was eating her alive.

  The village women were at the cottage all day now. They sat beside Mother’s bed, conversing in hushed voices across her body while she slept.

  ‘It’s as though Doctor Entwistle made her worse by saying she had to stay put,’ Juliet whispered to Mrs Grove.

  ‘Nay, lass. He could see it were time.’

  But Juliet still thought the doctor’s visit had been like having the Angel of Death under their roof.

  When she threw up again the following morning, her blood turned to ice.

  Not despair. Morning sickness.

  ‘Why not go for a walk, chick?’ suggested Ella. ‘Fresh air would do you good.’

  Juliet didn’t want to, couldn’t be bothered, but she couldn’t be bothered to argue either, so off she went. Not through the park. The last time she had walked through the park … She slipped through the gate in the wall and headed for the village, but that was asking for trouble. Trouble: conversation, kind enquiries. Instead she took the long way round and ended up at the church. Should she visit Pop? She ought to, but knowing that Mr Dancy would soon open up his grave to receive Mother was too much to bear.

  She trailed back the way she had come, entering through the side gate.

  Ella came running along the path. ‘There you are. Come quickly! She’s took bad ways.’

  They raced to the cottage. Faces turned as Juliet burst into Mother’s room. She pushe
d past someone and gazed down at her mother, motionless and heartbreakingly thin. Her arms were lying on top of the bedclothes, neatly arranged by her sides. Juliet picked up one brittle hand and clutched it.

  On the other side of the bed, Mrs Grove leant forward to speak to Mother. ‘She’s here now, love. You can go if you want.’

  The hand in Juliet’s went slack.

  ‘Mr Nugent’s downstairs. You’re to go to Arley House. If you pack your things, he’ll have them fetched.’

  Juliet was aware of not hearing Ella’s gentle words until several seconds after they were spoken. It took that long for them to penetrate the layers of grief and shock. She was at Mother’s bedside. They had washed Mother’s poor emaciated body and laid her out, then embarked upon a long but oddly comforting discussion about what to do with her hair, eventually plaiting it into a single braid drawn forwards over her shoulder.

  The others had gone downstairs then, leaving Juliet. Mother looked peaceful, the lines of pain smoothed out. Juliet wanted to talk to her, but there was too much to say, and anyroad, she was gone.

  She looked up into Ella’s face. ‘No. I’m staying here until after the funeral.’

  Ella crept out, and she turned back to Mother. What in heaven’s name was she going to do? You could get rid of a baby, but she had no idea how, except that it was dangerous and the mother sometimes died too. She would end up, oh, dear God, she would end up being sent to Ladyfield.

  Ella’s return cut across her thoughts. ‘Mr Nugent will arrange the funeral for Friday. He says you’re expected at Arley House at four o’clock that afternoon. We’ll hold the wake at Beatrice’s. It makes sense, pet,’ she added when Juliet started to protest. ‘It’s a fair old walk here from the village and it’ll make it easier to have this place ready an’ all.’

  Ready for Juliet to leave; ready to move into Mr Nugent’s household. She couldn’t do that; she couldn’t walk into the trap of her own free will. Yet what alternative was there? She couldn’t go to London to be with Hal – not now. She pressed her fist to her mouth to stifle a cry of anguish as she fought not to break down.

  Arms came round her and for one wild wonderful, stupid, stupid moment, she thought it was Hal, but the arms didn’t feel right, and when she looked, it was Ella.

  ‘There, petal, you have a good skrike.’

  And she did, though the hot tears were mixed with shame, because Ella thought she was crying for Mother. And she was, she was, but she was crying for herself, too, and Mr Nugent’s relentless take, take, taking of gratitude and Rosie’s revenge and the terrible fear that was rolling in her guts.

  She didn’t cry for long. She couldn’t afford to.

  ‘Come and have some tea,’ Ella coaxed.

  ‘Has Mr Nugent gone?’

  ‘Aye, love.’

  Mrs Grove and two or three others looked up as they appeared.

  ‘We were just saying,’ Mrs Grove observed, ‘that we’ll be in first thing tomorrow to get this place shipshape for handing back.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Juliet. Not that the cottage needed special cleaning after the way these stalwart friends had cared for it, but that wouldn’t stop them.

  ‘I’ll tell the Prices, and they can write to Hal,’ said Mrs Grove. ‘You must write to that aunt of yours. If it goes by the evening post, she’ll get it in’t morning. Not that she put herself out to come to your dad’s funeral,’ she added darkly.

  Juliet’s fingertips touched lips that had parted on a small breath.

  Now she knew what to do.

  Chapter Twelve

  While the others scrubbed and polished, Juliet hauled the rugs outside and gave them a furious beating, carrying on long after the dust wafted away. She was hitting William Turton – or possibly Mr Nugent. She was full of – she wasn’t sure what she was full of, but it was hot and painful, and made her feel sick and resentful and desperate. Now that she had her plan, now that she wasn’t doomed to go to Arley House, she ought to be light-hearted, only she couldn’t be because there was still the baby. She imagined it coming loose inside her and bashed harder still, until her hands were grasped and pulled to a halt by Ella.

  They might be Ella’s hands, but it was Mrs Grove’s voice saying, ‘That’s enough, thank you. Your mother’s things want sorting and you need to get packed.’

  They made neat piles of Mother’s beautifully stitched clothes.

  ‘It’ll be fortunate women who receive these,’ Mrs Grove observed.

  ‘How will we carry it all?’ Ella asked.

  ‘Bundled in a sheet,’ was the robust answer, and when Juliet winced, Mrs Grove added briskly, ‘There are dishes in the kitchen that want returning to the big house.’

  She was grateful to escape. She arrived at Moorside to be overwhelmed by kind words and before she knew it, she was fighting back tears and all she wanted was to get back to the cottage.

  She returned to find virtually all her possessions had vanished.

  ‘Mr Nugent sent a trunk,’ Mrs Grove explained, ‘so we packed it for you. It were collected ten minutes since.’

  She stared in disbelief. All that remained was what she needed tonight and her black shop dress for tomorrow, plus her straw boater, its red ribbon replaced by black. But everything else was gone, including her work basket. It was all she could do not to groan aloud. She needed her work basket. Wait – Hal’s painting still hung on the wall. Best not draw attention to it or someone would rush it over to Arley House.

  ‘And I’ve got your mother’s money tin to give to Mr Nugent.’

  Not the money as well? ‘I can do that,’ Juliet said quickly.

  ‘She entrusted the job to me and I take my responsibilities seriously. Mr Nugent will look after it for you.’

  Juliet’s nails bit into the palms of her hands. She wanted to scream at Mrs Grove and call her an interfering busybody.

  ‘If you take the bundle of clothes to my cottage,’ Mrs Grove instructed Ella, ‘I’ll fetch the tin round to Mr Nugent. We’ll leave the work basket here while the morrow.’

  It had been Ella’s idea to give the village women items from Mother’s basket after the funeral, and Juliet had agreed, because these good neighbours deserved useful little keepsakes and she had her own basket. Or she had until a few minutes ago. Now she had only her night things, tomorrow’s funeral garb and the clothes she stood up in. She had no money – yes, she did. Mother’s savings and the wages Juliet had tipped up were gone, but she still had her sewing money. It would have to do.

  ‘Did this belong to your mother?’ Ella held a brass candlestick. ‘It was beside her bed. It should go in your room, Juliet, if it’s to go to Arley House.’

  ‘It belongs to the cottage.’

  She took it upstairs when the others left, hesitating outside Mother’s closed door before placing the candlestick on the shelf at the top of the stairs. She couldn’t enter the room just to return the candlestick. It would be like pretending Mother was still alive.

  It was a glowing summer evening with skies the blue of cornflowers and clouds edged with gold when Mother was brought downstairs for the final time. Her simple coffin was placed across wooden chairs that Juliet hadn’t even realised had appeared, its lid propped discreetly in a corner. Juliet grasped Ella’s hands until Mother was settled. Then the vigil began, the side gate being left unlocked all night for folk to come and go.

  Mrs Grove sent Juliet to bed at dawn, waking her before she left. Juliet knew she ought to sit up and say thank you, but if she moved so much as an inch, she would have to bolt for the wash bowl.

  The moment the door closed behind Mrs Grove, her stomach heaved. She clamped her mouth shut, praying for the sound of the front door. Vomit surged up her gullet, burning it, and poured into her mouth so fulsomely that she thought it would come trickling out of her nose and eyes. With bulging cheeks, she rolled out of bed and hung over the bowl. Afterwards she slipped her arms into her dressing gown and carried the bowl out to the earth-closet, holding
her breath against the vile smell.

  Clad in her black dress, she wound the laces up the hooks on her boots, then pulled Pop’s old carpetbag from under the bed. She was feeling queasy again, but perhaps that was nerves. The carpetbag was roomy and, had they still been in her possession, would have held all her clothes, leaving her to carry her work basket in her other hand. Instead, what she had left took up next to no space and she stared in dismay.

  She emptied the carpetbag and eased Mother’s work basket inside, laying Hal’s picture of the laburnum walk on top. It was a snug fit, but she slotted in her hairbrush and clothes brush down the sides before cramming in yesterday’s clothes. Closing the bag, she fastened the straps and tested its weight: not heavy, just bulky.

  She hurried to stash it in bushes on the outskirts of the village. Everyone would go from the church to Mrs Grove’s cottage, and Juliet was meant to go later from there to Arley House, but instead she would double back, collect her bag and disappear, taking the path across the tops and down into Annerby to catch the train.

  The queasiness was building as she headed back to the cottage. There was a horse and cart outside the gate. One of the estate men emerged from inside, carrying the bedside cabinet from her room, followed by another, carrying the mirror, wrapped in a cloth.

  Mr Nugent stood in the middle of the parlour. ‘If you’ve packed the last of your things, they can go on the cart.’