Lady's Maid

by Margaret Forster

  Minnie’s words reminded Wilson that it was indeed a year since Miss Elizabeth had first received a letter from Mr Browning. When her mistress smiled, looking up with shining eyes, and said that today was an anniversary of some importance, she was able to say she knew what it was. ‘To think, Wilson, that a year ago I was such a deprived person and now I feel blessed by all my letters.’ Wilson could think of no response. Since she had read none of these precious letters, what her mistress said seemed faintly ridiculous and almost irritated her. ‘They are very special letters, dear,’ Miss Elizabeth said softly, as though appearing to realise her mistake, ‘very tender and true, increasingly so. Will you not believe me and be happy for me?’

  ‘Indeed yes, ma’am,’ Wilson said hastily, ‘I am very glad for you, truly.’

  ‘And I dare to be glad for myself.’ But then a great sigh followed. ‘Glad but frightened all the same, Wilson, frightened of what is to come and the courage needed to achieve happiness.’ Wilson stayed quite still, her hands folded in her lap, her head slightly bent. She struggled to interpret the nuances of every word spoken, every small movement and expression of face and body. Every time she sneaked a quick look at her mistress, she saw something different – pride, joy, alarm, hope all chased each other in her eyes. ‘Do I have the courage, Wilson, do you think?’

  ‘For what, miss?’

  ‘For life, for choosing life.’

  ‘Why yes, miss. You are alive, miss.’

  ‘I am now, half alive at least, but not fully, gloriously alive, not fully wakened in every sense. And I could be, I will be, if I have the courage.’ Again, Wilson could think of no reply to make, though by now she had no doubt what was being said. I spend my time, she thought, not knowing what to say when something most needs to be said.

  ‘Well, I will have my coffee now,’ Miss Elizabeth said finally, ‘and drop such fanciful talk until another time when I can take you into my confidence with some meaning, for I talk in riddles and you are very good to listen so carefully dear. Now, let us talk of spring and your holiday.’

  Chapter Twelve

  BUT SPRING AGAIN double-crossed everyone that year. Daffodils well above the ground in late January, buds opening early February and then when it seemed they were to have no winter at all in London that year the backlash came, just as Minnie always predicted. Snow hung on the blossom in March so thickly that it was impossible to separate the white pear tree blooms from the crystallised flakes. The effect was pretty but the result cruel. It seemed to Wilson that her mistress instead of bewailing the setback of the seasons, welcomed it. The whole household expressed their amazement at how Miss Elizabeth flourished and in expressing it seemed to suspect some secret to which only Wilson was privy. Writing to her mother Wilson confessed she felt:

  — my mistress is happy it is true, and it is all to do with Mr Browning, but nothing has gone further that I have been told. Except for what she is writing which she shows no one and does not talk of and cannot be like her other work which she is open about. On afternoons lately when I have brought in the tea she has been lost to the world in her writing hearing neither my footstep nor my voice and when the cup is put in front of her coming to with a start and colouring and hiding her paper under a book. It is not a letter which so absorbs her, that I do know, because my eye is quick enough to see it is set in lines like poetry. There is nothing untoward in Miss Elizabeth writing her verse but her manner over this makes me think it is very special poetry and others might conclude of some intimate nature but what it is I cannot say. She talks constantly of Italy and was found with timetables spread out yesterday but they were only to help a friend who contemplates going abroad she said. I hear Pisa and Rome and Naples mentioned in a most familiar fashion and grow to like them —

  In fact Wilson grew to yearn for them. Only one letter from Timothy the whole winter and that was a poor thing but it was posted in Rome and had a magic of its own. It arrived after Christmas with news that he would be back in London by March but March came and went and no Timothy had appeared. Wilson was ever alert to hear Mr Kenyon’s name, for Miss Elizabeth expected his return soon, but she failed to hear it. As her mistress blossomed she felt herself fade. She let her mistress’s clothes out and took her own in. She watched her mistress’s colour turn from an absolute pallor to a healthier paleness and her own robust complexion fade to an unattractive sallow. And yet she was not ill, nothing specific ailed her.

  Minnie said she needed a tonic and would pick up when she went home. The very word made Wilson shudder. Last year, she had looked forward with such longing to going north but this year the thought had no attraction. She did not know if she even wanted to go at all. When Miss Elizabeth suggested she could name a day, she said it was early yet and the time need not be fixed. Her mistress queried this, asking if her mother would not like to know when she was to come and Wilson was obliged to admit that she would. Finally, the same two weeks as the year before were fixed and this time there was no attempt to put her off or exert any kind of emotional blackmail. It seemed to Wilson that her mistress was, on the contrary, pushing her to go. ‘Now Wilson dear,’ Miss Elizabeth said the night before, ‘enjoy your holiday for next year, perhaps – I cannot say precisely why, but next year it may be that a visit to your loved ones will prove – difficult to arrange, I cannot say more. Or it may be your holiday will come at a different time and you must prepare your mother for this. Will you do that, dear?’ Wilson said she would and prepared to take her leave. Miss Elizabeth seemed to look at her more closely than she had done for a long time and to be startled by what she saw for she said, ‘Why, Wilson, I had not noticed how thin you have become until just then or is it your new travelling coat? Your mother will say I have worked you too hard – have I, dear?’

  ‘Indeed no, miss.’

  ‘I am glad to hear it. You must tell me if you find the chair too heavy to push for you have pushed it a great deal lately.’

  ‘The chair is not too heavy, miss, and I like to be out.’

  ‘I know you do and so do I and at last I can be. It does me good but I cannot say, looking at you Wilson, that anyone would think it does you much good. Now go and this year I will be brave as befits my new cheerfulness, and not force you to write to me. The time will fly.’

  For Wilson, it dragged. She could hardly believe how long two weeks could be and how much of a strain on her nerves was the effort of appearing to be delighted. Every night she had a headache from all the unnatural laughing and chattering she forced herself to do and was glad to get to bed away from mother’s eye. Only to Ellen on her weekly night at home did she confide that she did not know what was the matter with her. ‘I feel low,’ she whispered, ‘and have the heart for nothing.’ Ellen asked her how long she had felt pulled down and, thinking back, Wilson decided it was since the plan for Miss Elizabeth to winter abroad had come to nothing. ‘It seemed such a blow,’ she murmured, ‘as much to me as Miss Elizabeth and yet I cannot think why.’ Ellen laughed under the bedclothes and pinched her. ‘Ah,’ she whispered, ‘but then ask yourself who is abroad as you might see if you went and then ask yourself again why you feel so low.’ Wilson was cross and pinched Ellen hard in return. ‘It is nothing to do with Timothy Wright,’ she muttered, ‘I was glad he went, wasn’t I? I told you I was. I wanted free of his pestering and he was nothing to me.’ Ellen snorted and had to be pinched again. ‘Absence maketh the heart grow fonder,’ Ellen recited and added, ‘How long is it since he went? Six months? Longer? You fool yourself, Lily. You are in love, that’s what all this feeling low is.’ ‘In love with a man that writes once?’ Wilson flashed back. ‘Oh, men don’t go in for letter writing,’ Ellen said. ‘Mr Browning does,’ Wilson argued. ‘But he’s a gentleman,’ said Ellen, ‘their ways are different and even so I bet not many men do as he does. Our sort of men don’t rate letter writing, that’s the point. You wait till you see this Timothy and if your inside turns to water and you feel an itch down there then – ’


  But she got no further. Wilson slapped her once for vulgarity and again for impertinence and Ellen was so annoyed at being beaten, for what she had said was only a bit of fun, that she left their bed and went to sleep with May, vowing she would not come home again while Wilson was there if she was to be treated so. But she did come again, the next week, and Wilson heard all about her new young man who was an apprentice nearly out of his time at the glassworks. ‘We’ll get wed next spring,’ Ellen said confidently, ‘but don’t tell mother for she doesn’t like Albert, she says he is after one thing and has no manners, as if I cared for manners, but you will like him, Lily, and I want you to meet him before you go and I will see to it that you do.’ Wilson wished she had not bothered because she liked Albert Cole no more than mother did. He was rough and cocky and had an insolent, challenging air. She could not see what Ellen liked about him, beyond a certain rough handsomeness and that made her even more wary.

  ‘Isn’t he manly?’ Ellen breathed, and Wilson was obliged to agree that if manly meant big and heavy and tough then yes Albert was manly but not in the way Timothy was. Timothy, in being manly, had an air of strength, of confidence, Albert, on the other hand, reeked of brutality and of stupidity. Unlike Ellen, she would not feel protected by such a man but threatened. It alarmed her greatly and shocked her to be told by Ellen that she had given herself wholly to Albert some weeks past. ‘I couldn’t resist it,’ Ellen whispered. ‘I wanted it so bad and so did he. I was scarce in control of myself, I tell you.’ Wilson made an exclamation of disgust. ‘Now why do you click your tongue?’ Ellen said. ‘God made us so and I see no cause for shame.’

  ‘God has not joined you together in his house,’ Wilson said, ‘and that is cause for shame enough I think.’

  ‘Oh, that’s chapel talk,’ Ellen said, ‘and I don’t care for it.’

  ‘And I don’t care for the fool you’re making of yourself. What will you do if he doesn’t keep his word and marry you? What will you do if you get with child?’

  ‘He will keep his word,’ Ellen whispered back fiercely, ‘and I am careful.’

  ‘Others have been careful or so they thought and lived to see there is no such thing.’

  ‘But there is, and I know of it but since you are so unkind I shan’t tell you even if you beg me.’

  ‘Fine talk,’ said Wilson scornfully, ‘and I don’t want to hear of it. We will just see how all this ends. Mother will never forgive you.’

  ‘Mother will never know unless you tell her and if you do I will never forgive you.’

  She did not, of course, mention a word to mother, who seemed too much preoccupied with work she was doing for a Mr Conroy, a druggist who had opened an apothecary’s shop in Newcastle. He came out to Fenham to gather the plants and herbs and berries he needed to make his powders and hearing of Mrs Wilson’s reputation had sought her out and suggested she might help him. He brought out glass specie jars for her to fill, first checking that she could indeed discern the difference between the many plants he needed. Wilson could see how happy mother was collecting the specimens and knowing to what good use they were put. Fanny went with her to the Town Moor and the woods near Fenham and enjoyed the open air, even if she was no real help to mother and could not tell a dandelion from a cowslip. Mr Conroy’s new shop was imposing and, when taken to see it, mother had blushed to think she had helped to stock such an impressive array of storage shelves. ‘If I had my time again, Lily,’ she confided, ‘I should like to have become an apothecary, if women were able.’

  Ellen, Wilson saw, was far from mother’s thoughts but, watching her sister, she decided mother must surely guess. Ellen was quite transformed and came in from seeing Albert flushed and defiant and triumphant. She was not a pretty young woman but she had suddenly taken on a glow that made her attractive. She acted as though she had won some coveted prize and the victory intoxicated her. It maddened Wilson but she was at the same time fascinated by Ellen’s clear enjoyment of her carnal relationship with Albert. The mere thought of Ellen and Albert coupling made her nauseous but if it could make Ellen so happy and lively, then it could not be the thing of horror she had always imagined, something to be endured for the sake of love and marital duty or the procreation of children. She would rather have died than ask Ellen what it was like but when, at night, Ellen boasted of how she felt, her sister did not silence her. ‘The minute he touches me,’ Ellen murmured, ‘I am on fire and pulling him to me and I can hardly bear the time it takes to loosen our clothes and feel each other and then when we are joined and he is thrusting and thrusting it is never hard enough and I feel I might burst with all the running towards him in me until I catch him and then I leave this world, I do, I leave it and know not where I am.’ Wilson turned on her side, away from Ellen. ‘Oh, it is sweet, Lily, and exciting, and I don’t care who knows it, I can think of nothing else.’

  On her return, when Miss Elizabeth asked how her mother was and then, naming each one, her sisters, Wilson found to her fury that she blushed as Ellen was mentioned. Her mistress smiled and looked enquiring. ‘Is there some news about Ellen?’ she asked, ‘are we to hear wedding bells?’

  ‘In a year, miss. She thinks.’

  ‘Then it is not settled?’

  ‘She says it is settled.’

  ‘But you do not believe her?’

  ‘A year is a long time and the man in question is – ’

  ‘You falter, Wilson. Out with it, is what? Untrustworthy?’

  ‘I do not know, but I met him and I cannot say as I would trust him, no.’

  ‘Ah, but you are out of the ordinary run, dear. Perhaps your sister Ellen lacks your discernment.’

  ‘Perhaps she does,’ said Wilson, a little bitterly.

  Leaving mother had been hard, even harder than before, now that she felt guilty about her own desire to go, which she had to struggle to hide, and guilty too because she could not pretend that Ellen was an adequate substitute for herself. Ellen was selfish, her head filled, on her own admission, with thoughts of Albert and nothing else. All her free time was spent with him, leaving May to help mother with Fanny, who was not well at the time Wilson left. Her mother said nothing to make her think she was worried but she read in her eyes a sorrow and even a fear that had not been there before. Some of this Wilson tried to tell Miss Elizabeth who was sympathetic but inclined to wander off into predictable memories of her own mother which ended in a certain tearfulness. ‘Mothers are our best friends,’ Miss Elizabeth murmured. Wilson, paying lip service to this, thought how in her case it was no longer true. Lizzie had become the nearest thing she had ever had to a best friend, one to whom she could talk about Ellen and her distress about Timothy Wright.

  Mr Kenyon, it seemed, had been back in London two months and Timothy with him. When first she heard this, Wilson felt a great rush of excitement and began immediately looking out for the post as eagerly as did her mistress. Mr Browning’s letters arrived daily as usual, sometimes twice a day, but there was nothing from Timothy. Despondent, Wilson brought herself to believe he would call rather than write and took to grooming herself with extra care each afternoon and making sure everyone in the house knew she was in. But then, in a flash of inspiration so obvious that she laughed aloud, she realised that of course Timothy would expect to meet her in the park. When she said this to Lizzie, her friend looked grave. ‘Now Lily,’ Lizzie said gently, ‘remember you sent him off won’t you? You promised nothing, only said you would think about it if he proved himself. Well, a man might get tired of that, for all your letters, if he got them. A man, on travels such as Timothy’s, may see things differently. So you must be prepared, Lily and not expect to start again where you left off.’

  Afterwards, Wilson was grateful for Lizzie’s warning. If it had not been for her words, she had no doubt she would have made a fool of herself and if there was one thing she could not bear to see publicly damaged, it was her pride. As it was, she was able to conduct herself admirably when one day towards the end of May
she and Miss Elizabeth met Timothy Wright in Regent’s Park with a young woman on his arm. Miss Elizabeth was walking at the time, holding on with one hand to the chair which Wilson pushed, though it was rarely used now. Timothy was coming straight towards them and, even if she had wished to avoid him, Wilson could not have done so. She gripped the chair handle tightly and arranged a smile on her face. As Timothy came abreast she blazed the smile in his direction and he nodded, his face a fiery red, and she nodded and they were past. Her mistress turned to say, ‘Is that not – ’ and then stopped. She put her hand tightly over Wilson’s and squeezed it. ‘I think we will go home now, dear,’ she said, ‘I am tired after all.’ Once home and tea prepared, she said she felt she wanted to be alone for an hour and Wilson might go. No reference was made to Timothy.

  As Wilson toiled up to her room feeling sick and numb, Molly called that there was a note come for her and that it was downstairs. Dully, Wilson trailed down and picked up the note, seeing at once who it was from. In her room, where the strong afternoon sun flooded in to mock her misery, she first lay down on the bed and wondered if she might cry. No tears came. Sighing, she contemplated Timothy Wright’s note. Should she even open it? It would only add to her humiliation, she was sure, and yet she could not prevent herself. Slowly she drew the single sheet of paper out of its envelope. The information on it was minimal. Timothy said he was sorry not to have told her he was married but it had happened quickly and he had not had the opportunity to let her know. He had married a Mrs Oliphant’s maid in Rome in February by special licence at the British Embassy. He had left Mr Kenyon’s employ and with his help was running a boarding house with his new wife, who was expecting, in Cheapside. He hoped she ‘would not feel bad’ about it.