The Second-last Woman in England

by Maggie Joel

  The housekeeper, Mrs Thompson, opened the front door so rapidly she must have been standing right behind it.

  ‘They’ve given you the job, then?’ she enquired, peering at Jean with a raised eyebrow.

  ‘Yes. Hello. It’s Miss Corbett. Jean. I start today.’

  ‘I dare say!’ Mrs Thompson replied in a manner that suggested she had seen nannies come and go, and at this time in her life she didn’t need to see any more. ‘Well, I expect it’s for the best,’ she added cryptically. ‘You’re very early though,’ and she peered at Jean as though the explanation for this early arrival could be read on her face. ‘They aren’t up yet.’

  It was nine o’clock and hadn’t she been told to be here at nine? But it seemed best not to argue.

  ‘Well, you’d better come in,’ Mrs Thompson announced, sounding as though she had weighed up various options and had arrived at this, the best one.

  She was a stocky woman, short and broad, and Jean found herself regarding the top of Mrs Thompson’s helmet of unlikely tight blonde curls as she stepped past her into the hallway. Yellow would be a more accurate description of the curls, the kind of brassy yellow that came out of a hairdresser’s bottle. She wore a tight-fitting floral dress that looked at least one size too small with buttons that strained across an enormous bust, and a white apron double-tied around her waist.

  Mrs Thompson led the way up a flight of stairs. Then they climbed a second flight and continued going up until Jean lost count of which floor they were on and Mrs Thompson turned purple and began to wheeze. At last she paused on a distant landing and opened a door on her right.

  ‘This is the room,’ she gasped. She didn’t say: This is your room.

  They stood in the doorway surveying the room, Mrs Thompson with an air of suspicion as though she half expected the now departed Nanny Peters to be hiding in the cupboard.

  ‘That’s the bed,’ she said (Jean had already spotted the bed), ‘the window—I don’t think it opens or nothing, but they do say you can see right over to the hospital and beyond from there. There’s a chest under the bed and the tallboy here for your clothes and what-not,’ (she paused to regard Jean’s meagre suitcase) ‘and the bathroom’s out here, second door on the left. I’m across the landing there.’

  She finished up by reaching for a cigarette and appeared in no hurry to depart.

  ‘Well, I must unpack,’ Jean declared, going into the room. She placed her case on the pink, tasselled bedspread and hoped Mrs Thompson didn’t intend to stand and watch. She slowly undid the clasps and surveyed the contents, aware that Mrs Thompson hadn’t moved.

  ‘You don’t need to hide nothing from me,’ Mrs Thompson declared huffily. ‘I’m sure you’ve nothing I wish to take.’

  Jean turned at once to face her. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Thompson, I certainly never meant to imply—’

  Mrs Thompson had already turned and made her way, with some dignity, across the landing and down the narrow stairs. But she paused on the bend in the staircase. ‘You can come down to the kitchen, if you want to, when you’ve finished unpacking. I daresay you’ll be wanting a cuppa by then,’ and she disappeared.

  Unsure if this was an invitation or a challenge, Jean stood for a moment regarding the bedspread. It had a hole in its centre that had been inexpertly darned, she wondered for a moment about Nanny Peters, who had been here before her and who had left to tend to an elderly parent in Leicester. There was nothing of her here now, no trace at all.

  She would leave something of herself here in the Wallis household, Jean resolved, something by which they would always remember Nanny Corbett.

  The bed was pushed into the corner of the room. On the far wall was a window that faced east, across to the private garden opposite, and looking down the street she could see the roofs of the Royal Brompton and Marsden hospitals to the south. The room seemed quiet and empty and bare, but perhaps any room would seem quiet and empty and bare when compared with the room she’d shared with the children at Mrs McIlwraith’s in Malacca Row, or with the room they had all slept in together at home. That had been four to a bed. Here you had a room to yourself—all to yourself!

  And who did you talk to? Whose warmth did you share?

  She stared for a moment into a gaping black void.

  The walls were painted. And not just distemper but paint—a cream colour on three sides of the room—and wallpaper in a rose design on the fourth wall. Old wallpaper—she could see the corners peeling and some strips had been torn right off, but wallpaper, nevertheless. There was a single wooden chair and a rug on the floor, a wooden washstand in the corner with a tall chipped enamel washing jug on it and against the far wall stood a cupboard—a tallboy, Mrs Thompson had called it and Jean had spun around and half expected to see a lanky youth slouching in the corner but it was only a fancy name for a wardrobe. Its doors hung open and it stood empty as though no one had used it in years.

  She went over to the window. The frame was old, the paint flaking, the wood rotting. It looked as though no one had ever opened it. Somehow she didn’t want to be the first one to try.

  How many girls had stood here at this window peering through this dusty glass at the street below? How many had placed their clothes in this cupboard? Had stood before this bed and thought about home? But those girls had been servants and the world had been a different place then. Jean was here because she had chosen to be. And she could leave any time she chose.

  She surveyed the contents of her case. Everything was neatly folded and precisely packed. When you had little, you took good care of it. She carefully lifted out her three blouses and three skirts and placed them in the cupboard, hung her coat on the hanger and arranged both pairs of shoes beneath her bed. Her underthings, nylons and a pair of kid gloves that had once been rather smart but were now best kept out of sight went into the drawer and her Sunday-best hat, still in its protective tissue paper, she placed on top of the cupboard.

  At the bottom of the case was the large and elderly copy of the Bible that she had purchased from a musty old bookshop near Liverpool Street. It had a burgundy leather cover, darkened by time and wrinkled and creased like an old man’s hands, and the words on the front were picked out in gold that had turned black from the years and from the countless fingers that had traced its reassuring letters. It was the sort of Bible that must have been in a family for generations though not in the Corbett family. The Corbett family Bible, a green-covered one that had resided on the sideboard and was placed on the table each Sunday morning and on other important occasions, had perished along with the Corbett family on that fateful Sunday morning in 1945.

  It was odd what had survived. Along with Mum’s navy shoes, the small case contained a china horse that had once belonged to Gladys, Jean’s younger sister. And wrapped around the horse was a length of yellow ribbon, tattered at one end, that her youngest sister, Nerys, had once worn in her hair. And beside that was a tobacco tin with a dented yellow lid showing a sailor in a jersey and a peaked cap and within which Dad had kept not tobacco, but quotations from the Bible. Now the tin contained two green buttons which Edward, aged six, had been wearing on his cardigan that far-off Sunday morning. Of Bertie, five years old and last in the family, there was nothing to show that he had ever existed at all.

  Jean lifted the items from the case and laid them ceremoniously side by side on the bed, then looking around she settled on a place on the floor beneath the window. She closed her case and laid it there, placing each item on it. Then she stood back to survey her arrangement. Yes, that was right. That was how things should be. Lastly she picked up the Bible and laid it on the pillow near where her head would lie.

  There would be an apt quote for this moment, Dad could always find it, sometimes without even having to look it up, but Jean couldn’t think of one. Eventually she settled on ‘So we may boldly say: The Lord is my helper; I will not fear. What can man do to me?’ which was from Hebrews 13 and was good if you felt lonely.

  A b
ell tolled in the still morning air, an urgent single note over and over. And from further away, perhaps carried by a slight breeze, other bells were tolling, this time a peal competently rung in a steady rhythm. It was Sunday morning and the Wallises would be going to church. It was unlikely the family attended Chapel, more likely a Church of England church, but there would be a chapel of some kind in the district, she felt certain. Perhaps Mrs Wallis would let her go there sometimes instead of to their own church.

  Casting caution to the wind she tackled the catch on the window and, with only a brief tussle, it loosened and she was able to ease the window open. It was warm outside, much warmer than when she had made her journey across London this morning from Mrs McIlwraith’s.

  Jean gazed out over the rooftops and at the silent and empty lawn of the private garden opposite. It looked so inviting, that large stretch of grass and the flower beds with their sprinkling of late-blooming yellow, pink and cream roses, and yet no one seemed to admire them. The whole street was silent and empty and, yes, it was a Sunday but even on a Sunday Malacca Row had been a bustle of activity, everyone in their Sunday best and Mum calling out not to dirty your clothes. But here no one called to anyone. No one even left their house.

  Then a man did come down the street, a young man in a light-coloured and creased linen suit who walked with a long stride, not quite a swagger but close to it. He stopped at the padlocked gate and looked to left and right then hopped right over it and into the garden.

  Good, thought Jean, because it was stupid having railings around a garden to stop folk getting in. Like having a lock on the church door.

  The sun, which until that moment had bathed the whole street in glorious late-summer sunshine, was at that moment obscured by a solitary and very dark cloud. It was as though the day had abruptly ended and at the same moment Jean realised this was the young man she had seen in the garden yesterday, sitting on the bench. She stepped back from the window though it seemed unlikely the man would look up and notice her—and what did it matter if he did?

  In another moment the cloud had passed and the sun came out again as brilliant, if not more brilliant, than before. But Jean remained where she was, in the shadows.

  She could hear voices downstairs, a door opening and closing. The family were up, then, and she couldn’t very well hide in her room any longer. She must present herself to Mrs Wallis. And get the children’s breakfast. Or would Mrs Thompson do that? At Mrs McIlwraith’s she had done everything from making the children’s meals to queuing up for the meat ration. But Mrs McIlwraith was their neighbour, Jean had known her all her life. And that was Malacca Row, Stepney—there had been no housekeeper, no Mr McIlwraith and no Latin prep.

  There had been nothing at all like this.

  For a moment she couldn’t quite catch her breath and she sat down heavily on the bed, a hand pressed against her chest. She had left Mrs McIlwraith’s familiar four-room terrace, a house as familiar to her as her own. If she could go back—

  But there was no going back. She had made her choice and she would stick to it. You couldn’t avoid your responsibilities forever, not when God had finally shown you the way.

  She stood up and smoothed down her skirt and blouse and patted her curls with a glance in the small hand mirror. Lipstick? No, that was the wrong look. Instead she straightened the seam of her nylons and left the room.

  ‘Nanny! The new nanny is here!’ shrieked Anne as Jean descended the stairs to the lower floor. The child stood rooted to the spot in the middle of the hallway, her arm stuck out before her, pointing a long, pale finger as though she were witnessing a supernatural phenomenon.

  Jean arranged her features into a bright smile. ‘Hello, Anne.’

  ‘Nanny Peters used to come down those stairs just like that!’ the girl exclaimed, dismay writ large on her pale face.

  ‘What, one step at a time, you mean?’ said Julius, appearing in a doorway. ‘What would you have her do, Anne? Come down backwards? Or perhaps you’d prefer her to slide down the banister?’

  Mrs Wallis appeared from another room wearing a cream silk dress that clung to her shoulders and bust and flared out over her hips.

  ‘Miss Corbett. How delightful of you to join us.’

  She was wearing scarlet lipstick and shoes that were so white they had surely never been worn before, and Jean felt a moment of dismay. Was this how she—how they—dressed for Sunday breakfast? For church? Mrs Wallis looked as though she was on her way to a Buckingham Palace garden party.

  She came over and smiled and Jean’s dismay slowly receded.

  ‘I do hope you have settled in all right?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Mrs Wallis. I—’

  ‘Good. Now here is your list of duties,’ and she handed over three neatly typed sheets of paper. ‘Please come to me directly if you have any queries. You’ll find us quite informal on Sundays. Julius will complete his homework in the morning and Anne will need to practise her piano. The children ought to get some fresh air, so perhaps you’ll take them to the park this afternoon? Mr Wallis and I have a luncheon engagement so Mrs Thompson will do you and the children something cold in the kitchen, then we generally have tea at five.’ She turned to go back downstairs.

  That didn’t sound ‘quite informal’ to Jean.

  ‘And will the children be attending church this morning?’ she asked.

  There was a moment when everything in the house fell quiet.

  ‘Oh, I rather doubt it,’ replied Mrs Wallis, pausing halfway down the stairs and producing a cigarette from the folds of her dress. She smiled suddenly, disarmingly. ‘Not unless they stumble into one by accident, that is.’

  After she had gone there was a silence and Jean realised both children were watching her. Their expressions quite clearly said: this is interesting; what will the new nanny do next?

  Julius stuck his hands in his pockets and sauntered over. ‘We are not a church-going family, you see, Nanny,’ he explained. ‘Not due to any deep-seated principles of atheism, you understand. No, it’s more a sort of—’ he paused to consider, ‘… general apathy, really.’

  ‘I attend Chapel every Sunday,’ Jean said.

  ‘I should like to go too! Will you ask Mummy if we can come too?’ begged Anne, her eyes bright as though someone were proposing a day at the seaside.

  ‘Yes, Anne. I don’t see why not. If Mrs Wallis thinks it’s all right.’

  ‘Oh, she won’t mind,’ said Julius. ’As long as Anne remains an interested observer. Mummy won’t like it if she decides to sign up and become a nun, you know. And that’s exactly the sort of thing she does do,’ he added in a low voice, giving Jean a significant nod.

  ‘I would make a beautiful nun,’ said Anne dreamily, wasting little time in adopting this new role.

  Jean had a sense of things getting away from her.

  ‘Well, we don’t really have nuns at Chapel, Anne.’

  ‘Oh, what a shame,’ said Anne, sinking down onto the floor under the weight of this devastating blow to her youthful ambitions.

  ‘Now, have you both had your breakfast?’ said Jean briskly and was rewarded for her briskness by Anne leaping up and running down the stairs.

  ‘That means no,’ explained Julius, leading the way downstairs. ‘On Sundays Mrs Thompson usually has breakfast ready at nine-twenty. Housewives’ Choice is on at nine so we get our breakfast at twenty past. We’ve tried writing to the BBC, but they refuse to move it,’ and he went into a room at the rear of the house.

  Through the half-open door Jean could see a large table at which Anne and Mrs Wallis were seated. She couldn’t see the far side of the table, but she heard distinctly the voice of Mr Wallis.

  ‘… go into the office this afternoon, Harriet. We’ll go to the Swanbridges’ for lunch as arranged, then I’ll pop in afterwards. Anne, I am quite certain Nanny Peters did not encourage you to eat your egg in that manner. You are not dissecting a corpse.’

  Jean turned away. She was fairly certain a
nanny did not join the family for Sunday breakfast. Or indeed for any meal aside from tea with the children and the cold something in the kitchen to which Mrs Wallis had earlier alluded.

  Instead she continued down to the ground floor, then down an uncarpeted flight of stairs to the only part of the house she had yet to visit, and found herself in the doorway of a large, white-tiled basement kitchen. A vast dresser filled one side of the room displaying an astonishing array of china plates and other crockery on its various hooks and shelves. Two huge chipped enamel sinks and a long wooden draining board stood on the opposite side and in the centre of the kitchen was a wide wooden table at which sat Mrs Thompson, cigarette in hand. Before her was a magazine, she had a cup of tea near her elbow and the radio set was switched on within reaching distance.

  ‘…hymns from Kings College. And to start this morning’s programme, here is the choir of St Martin-in-the-Fields singing “Jerusalem”.’

  ‘There you are, Miss Corbett,’ said Mrs Thompson, putting down her cigarette. ‘Let me pour you a nice cuppa.’

  ‘That would be lovely, thank you,’ said Jean, sitting down. ‘Are you listening to the Sunday service, Mrs Thompson?’ she asked, nodding hopefully towards the radio.

  ‘Lord, no, there’ll be some nice light music on in a minute. Can’t abide all that hymn singing. But it’ll be over soon enough. How d’you take your tea? Sugar?’

  ‘Yes. Sugar, please,’ Jean murmured and felt a rush of something—guilt?—swirl dizzyingly about her head. You never had sugar in your tea at home, you saved it for other things. Often you gave your whole ration so that a cake could be baked or a custard as a special treat if it was someone’s birthday. ‘Oh, I’ve brought my ration books,’ she added and held them out.

  Mrs Thompson nodded but seemed in no hurry to take them, being more concerned with the mass of tea leaves at the bottom of the teapot.

  From her seat at the table Jean took in the boxes of eggs and the bread bins and the cake tins and the rows and rows of jars and tins and pots in the larder and the large tub of butter on the table. Was there no rationing in this part of London? Or were all the jars empty? Somehow she knew they weren’t.