The Narrowboat Girl

by Annie Murray

  Maryann gathered up and folded Pamela’s fine stockings. If she was a lady’s maid she would deal with their pretty clothes all the time and help them do their hair instead of cleaning out grates before the sun had risen of a morning and polishing floors with beeswax and turps! She pictured herself. Maryann Nelson: lady’s maid. And then her hope withered. They most likely wouldn’t even think of her for the post. They’d stopped wincing now every time she opened her mouth, but she’d never forgotten Diana Musson’s mirth the first time she heard Maryann speak.

  ‘Where on earth,’ she screamed, between red-lipstick lips, ‘did she get that terrible accent?’

  ‘Birmingham, my dear – I gather,’ Mrs Musson told her, and Diana looked closely at Maryann as if she was a rather exotic wild animal.

  ‘How perfectly extraordinary! Is the child quite well? She looks so dreadfully thin.’

  Maryann shook out the crumpled underslips and put them out for Ruth to iron. Then she stood and looked at herself for a moment in Pamela’s long mirror. A dark-eyed, serious face stared back at her. She was no longer ‘dreadfully thin’, that was one thing for certain. Slender, but curving, and rounder in the face than she had ever been.

  I’m a woman now, she thought, looking herself up and down in surprise. Women were supposed to marry and have babies. Maryann had spent so much time not thinking of herself, of her body, of her past, it came as a shock to her to notice she had grown up so much.

  Will I ever be able to be normal? she thought. Questions, feelings, which she had closed off in herself, were beginning to nudge their way to the surface.

  She pushed the cupboard door shut, closing off her view of herself. She didn’t want to look. It was too frightening.

  Twenty-Eight

  Charnwood House had been a haven to her, a place where she had enjoyed a long period of calm, like an animal in hibernation. Her fondest memory of arriving to work at Charnwood, after the nerve-racking interview with Mrs Letcombe (for which she prepared herself in the local baths with a good wash and change of clothes), was that first Christmas. By then she had been in the Mussons’ employ just a few weeks, having arrived at Banbury in early November, and she was still thin and withdrawn, closed in on herself. Looking back on it now, she could see that she had been really beside herself, in shock at Sal’s death, at her own cruel treatment by their stepfather, and by her feelings that Joel had betrayed her.

  That Christmas she began to close the door on the past. By the time the celebrations began she was already getting used to the day-to-day work of Charnwood House. She liked Letty and Alice wasn’t too bad, if rather petty. Letty was fair-minded and made sure everyone did their share, and life in the servants’ quarters was orderly and amiable. Mrs Letcombe was a motherly person – indeed she was a widow and mother of four grown-up children. Cook was blunt and strange and there were rumours that she had been crossed in love. Her dearest pleasure was to moan and mither, but most of it was just talk, and the butler Mr Thomas was touchy and pompous, but a kind man at heart. All of them assured her she had landed on her feet, and she soon found it to be so.

  The week before Christmas, Sid and Wally, overseen by Mr Thomas, dragged a huge Christmas tree in through the front door and it was set up in a gleaming brass pot in the front drawing room where there was a fire blazing for the holiday season. Maryann and some of the others were allowed to watch Mrs Musson dressing the tree, accompanied by Diana and Pamela; Hugh, the third boy, whose age fell between that of the two girls, was not yet home from boarding school. Maryann stood warming herself in the lovely room, with its comfortable chintz-covered chairs and long, sweeping curtains and watched, rapt, as the girls trimmed the tree with baubles and red and gold ribbons and a beautiful angel with gauzy wings which was pinned to the very top by Diana, on tiptoe on a chair.

  ‘There—’ She stood back afterwards and admired their work. ‘How do you like that?’

  She turned to Maryann, who mumbled back nervously, ‘It’s very nice.’

  Diana burst out laughing, looked at her sister and said, ‘Noice – oh isn’t she a scream!’

  Maryann blushed, but they laughed so much and without malice that she joined in in the end.

  ‘Don’t mind us,’ Pamela said sweetly. ‘It’s just we’ve never met anyone from Birmingham before.’

  Diana suddenly peered closely at her. ‘You’re very young, aren’t you? Why have you come down here?’

  Maryann’s throat went dry. ‘Erm – I was looking for work.’

  ‘But however did you get here?’ Pamela asked.

  ‘Down the cut.’

  The two girls found this hugely funny.

  ‘Down the what?’

  ‘She means the canal, I believe,’ Mrs Musson said, selecting sprigs from a pile of holly and laurel leaves from the garden. ‘Did you now, dear – that is an unconventional way to travel, I must say.’

  Maryann was very relieved when they left her alone. But she couldn’t stop looking at the tree, which was the biggest and most beautiful she had ever seen, and the fire beside it, stacked with apple wood which made a delicious smell as it burned.

  They had had a very busy time preparing the house. Maryann drew pleasure from simply moving about in such a lovely home, with its shining wood floors smelling of beeswax, the wide staircase with its red carpet and smooth wooden banister, the long windows and beautiful curtains. So much space, such sumptuous furniture. Compared with this, the houses in Ladywood seemed so dwarfed and mean.

  On Christmas Eve, the Mussons’ relatives started to arrive and the house was full of cries of greeting, doors opening and shutting, luggage being carted up to the rooms and the frantic barking of the two dogs. Mrs Musson’s sister came with her daughters, and Pamela and Diana ensconced themselves in their rooms in the evening with their cousins – giggling, exchanging clothes and making themselves up for dinner.

  In the days before Christmas, Diana had called the three housemaids together in the hall, lined them up with an indulgent grin on her face, and said, ‘Now – we always give our people a little gift for Christmas. I’d like you to think of something you’d like. Nelson – what about you?’

  Maryann, standing to attention with her arms by her sides, felt her hands begin to sweat and her heart was thumping hard. Whatever was she supposed to say?

  ‘I . . . er . . . I dunno, miss,’ she gasped. She looked desperately at Alice and Letty but they were both staring straight ahead of them.

  ‘There must be some little thing you could do with, surely?’ Diana Musson quizzed her.

  ‘Well – I could do with a comb,’ Maryann dared to say.

  Diana gave her loud laugh. ‘A comb? Oh my dear, how sweet! I think we can manage a comb, don’t you worry.’

  Maryann was relieved to find that Alice and Letty’s requirements were barely less modest than her own. Alice asked for a roll of ribbon and Letty wanted some needles and sewing thread. Diana went away, laughing cheerfully.

  On Christmas morning the family walked out along the frosty lane to the village church and came back gusting in on the cold air and still singing scraps of carols. Mr Musson had evidently been asked to read from the Old Testament. His loud, declamatory voice boomed up to her as she passed along the landing upstairs.

  ‘The Lord has forsaken me; my God has forgotten me! Can a woman forget the infant at her breast—’ There was a pause as he seemed to be struggling, with a grunt, out of his coat and there was laughter downstairs. ‘—or a loving mother the child of her womb?’

  Maryann had slowed, listening. The words brought back the smell of St Mark’s Church in Ladywood, the dark, hushed space inside. And they pierced her heart. ‘A loving mother . . .’ A great pang of homesickness passed through her. She could picture the house in Anderson Street, Christmas Day: Tony and Billy waking to find one of Mom’s old stockings on the foot of the bed with a penny and and orange, maybe a knob of sugar and a little notebook and pencil or toy inside. Her mom’d never been bad at that sor
t of thing. It was the thing to do and she’d always been all right at ‘the thing to do’. It was anything requiring more emotional effort she couldn’t seem to manage. Maryann’s eyes filled at the thought of Tony and Billy. Half the family gone, no sisters to give them any love.

  She wrote notes home to Tony and Nance every now and then, wanting them to know she was still thinking of them. She couldn’t bear to think of Tony believing she had completely deserted him without a thought. In all this time though, she had never had letters back, as she had not disclosed her address to them. She didn’t want anyone knowing where she was. But sometimes she felt so desolate, never hearing from any of them. Had Tony still got the china cat she’d given him that looked like Tiger? Did he ever think of her, she wondered. He and Billy must be quite grown up by now. Her throat ached with tears. She was just on the point of breaking down and crying when she heard footsteps coming towards her. It was Letty.

  ‘Maryann – you all right? Mrs M wants us all down in the games room.’

  When they went to the games room at the back of the house, Maryann found the servants all beginning to line up, and on the billiard table, a row of little wrapped parcels. Mrs Musson was there, and her daughters and their female cousins. Mrs Musson’s greying hair was pulled back into a more elegantly styled bun than usual, and she wore a dress of rich red velvet trimmed with gold brocade, which Maryann thought the loveliest she had ever seen.

  As she and Letty joined the end of the line, Mrs Musson was already calling the names of the servants one by one. Each parcel had a label in the shape of a leaf. Maryann saw Mrs Musson shaking hands with Mr Thomas and wishing him ‘the good health and joy of the season’. Then Mrs Letcombe, followed by Cook. When Mrs Letcombe opened her parcel, which was rather larger than most of the others, the layers of flimsy paper revealed a batch of balls of soft, lilac-coloured wool. Mrs Letcombe did a great deal of knitting and she gasped with pleasure.

  ‘Oh Mrs Musson, Miss Diana, thank you.’ She laughed. ‘Oh that’s beautiful, that really is.’

  ‘Now you make sure you knit something for yourself and not just all those grandchildren of yours!’ Diana teased her. ‘It’s for you to have something nice.’

  When Maryann’s turn came, she felt her hand taken into Mrs Musson’s cool, smooth palm and she glanced up at her shyly before lowering her eyes in confusion to the floor.

  ‘A happy Christmas to you, my dear,’ Mrs Musson said. ‘I do hope you’re settling in well with us. Mrs Letcombe says you’re a credit.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Maryann mumbled, unsure where to put herself. ‘It’s very nice ’ere – thank you, Mrs Musson.’ She glanced up again at Diana, whose red-lipped grin was bearing down on her as usual.

  ‘Here’s a gift for you, Nelson.’

  ‘Thank you, miss.’ She gave an awkward sort of curtsy as she accepted the parcel excitedly. Whatever it was, it wasn’t just a little comb!

  Tearing the paper off carefully, she found a brush and comb set, with a mirror included. The comb was tortoiseshell and the brush had a smooth wooden handle. She felt a big smile spreading over her face. ‘Oh these’re lovely, oh they are!’

  Letty had been given a beautiful little embroidered sewing pouch with needles and coloured threads, a silver thimble and a tiny pair of scissors, and Alice had three rolls of satiny ribbon in green, purple and royal blue. They were all delighted.

  ‘Back to work now,’ Letty said. ‘No rest for the wicked.’

  The day was indeed hard work, feeding the Mussons and their visitors, clearing up and tending to all the rooms, but Maryann loved the atmosphere of the house, the comings and goings, the laughter and loud air of festivity. Christmas was her favourite time at Charnwood, even though every year since she had been there she had to fight back poignant thoughts of home.

  The years gradually took on a routine. In the summer the Mussons went to the sea for several weeks, living in a cliff house they owned that looked out over the Salcombe estuary in Devon. Roland never went with them, however much Mrs Musson entreated him, saying the change and sea air would do him good. It was as if any such change to his habits had become impossible for him. But Maryann was allowed to go some years and every time plans were being made she hoped and prayed she’d be taken along. That first time, in 1929, was the first time she had ever seen the sea. They arrived, snaking slowly down the coast road on a dazzling July day, seeing the blue spread out until it faded into a blur at the horizon, and Maryann thought she had never felt so happy and excited. The month she passed there with Letty and the family was not arduously hard work and the two girls were allowed to go paddling in the sea, walk on the cliffs smelling the yellow gorse and sit on the beach licking ice creams. Maryann thought she was in heaven.

  ‘I don’t ever want to go ’ome!’ she said to Letty. ‘I never knew there was places like this in all the world!’

  Letty laughed, wiggling her back into a comfortable position on the sand. ‘Well, if you play your cards right you’ll come back next year.’

  And so the seasons went, and so she grew up: Christmas, spring cleaning, summer holidays, autumn coming round again; living through the events of the family: Miss Diana’s wedding, Pamela’s ups and downs with ‘chaps’, Hugh leaving school and joining Mr Musson at the bank, and Roland, who was always, disquietingly, at home. The three girls followed the lives of their employers like characters in a storybook or a play. The Mussons’ events were often their events. And this suited Maryann more than she even realized. Living through their lives saved her from having to live her own.

  And then Evan came and began to prise her feelings open again.

  Twenty-Nine

  Maryann stood in the kitchen, waiting as the toast for Roland Musson’s breakfast tray browned on the griddle. The back door was open as it was a warm morning of blue sky and puffy clouds, and a breeze blew into the kitchen, dispersing the smells of egg, soap and disinfectant that lingered there. Cook was at the table laying chump chops in a row ready for lunch and murmuring about needing to ‘get on and steam that pudding’.

  Maryann snatched the toast from the griddle and on to a plate before it could burn and went to the pantry to fetch the butter. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Evan come into the kitchen and did her best to ignore him. She removed the eggs from the pan with a spoon and arranged them as usual on the tray. But as she was buttering the toast she sensed Evan sliding round beside her. For a second his hand rested on her buttocks.

  She twisted away from him furiously, hoping Cook would notice and tick him off, but it was her turn to disappear into the pantry.

  ‘Don’t, Evan!’

  His dark eyes looked laughingly into hers. ‘You’re a proper tease you are, aren’t you, girl? Never mind – there’ll be time for us to have some fun later on.’

  Maryann looked into his round face with its habitual jaunty expression, his plump little neck squeezed into the collar of his uniform. He winked at her, as usual, and she turned her back on him again. Whatever she said to Evan, however many times she asked him to leave her alone, it seemed to make no difference.

  ‘I dunno why you’re so nasty to ’im,’ Alice said to her sometimes, jealous that no one was fixing their attention on her. ‘’E’s handsome and ’e’ll get on – ’e’s a good worker.’ Maryann and Evan were the same age, and in the months Evan had been there he had pursued Maryann with increasing determination. She realized she represented a challenge, even if he didn’t like her very much.

  Maryann would shrug. How could she explain what she felt to Alice, how much the sight of Evan filled her with panic. He revolted her and she was enraged by his assumption that she didn’t know her own mind, that if he kept on and on at her she’d fall willingly into his arms.

  ‘Go on – come for a walk with me this afternoon, eh? You and I could ’ave a lot of fun. Spring fever and that, eh?’ He nudged her with his elbow and gave a wink. It was her afternoon off every Wednesday and by hideous coincidence it was also Evan’s.
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  ‘No,’ she said abruptly. ‘I don’t want to walk out with yer, Evan. I don’t know how else to get it through your thick head. I ain’t coming with you and I never will. Now get out of my way – I’ve got to take up Master Roland’s breakfast and you’re holding me up.’

  ‘Evan,’ Cook commanded. ‘Get on with your work or you won’t be going anywhere this afternoon.’

  Evan backed away, making gestures behind Cook’s back and grinning in a way that made Maryann want to punch him. She put the teapot on the tray and set off upstairs. She felt horribly unsettled. Evan had only been in the house a matter of months, but gradually he had begun to transform it from her haven of safety and certainty to a place where she was always on her guard if he was about. She would creep softly to the door of the kitchen to check that she was not likely to be alone with him in there. She very seldom was, as Cook was almost always at her post. She checked round corners now, to see if he was coming. When he came near her the feeling of panic that rose in her set her pulse racing uncomfortably. He was so single-minded, so cunning and yet so stupid, and the combination was completely unnerving.