Lady's Maid

by Margaret Forster

  But although she was right and there were no embraces in front of Gerardine or anyone else, Wilson privately thought that the girl would have to be very unobservant not to see scores of instances every day which spoke of the passionate love her master and mistress had for each other. Throughout their journey to Orleans, by train and coach, it was there in every look they exchanged, in every word they spoke to each other, in every polite handing in and out of carriages. Mrs Jameson smiled to see it and then tried to hide her smile but she would catch Wilson’s eye and it would break out again. It was only as they neared Orleans that a certain tension replaced the ever-growing tenderness between them. The night before they were to arrive there, Wilson found her mistress weeping when she went to make her ready for bed. ‘My letters, Wilson,’ she murmured, the tears falling fast, ‘my letters – they wait for me like poison darts ready to strike my heart.’

  ‘Now come, ma’am, they are only letters whatever is in them and it is wrong to upset yourself so over pieces of paper, and Mr Browning will not be pleased.’

  ‘He does not understand, and you ought. Papa – oh, Papa will – oh, he will have …’

  ‘There will be other letters, ma’am, from Miss Henrietta and Miss Arabel and I cannot believe all your brothers will be angry. Now come, you must not weep and upset yourself or it will be the worse for you.’

  ‘As I have told you myself, Ba,’ said Mr Browning who had come in very quietly. ‘Thank you, Wilson, you are very sensible and I wish your good sense did not fall on deaf ears.’

  So with a good deal of placating, Mrs Browning was lulled to sleep and the final part of the journey faced with a resolute air. Wilson could not help feeling excited at the thought of letters of her own waiting for her, too, and hoped passionately that she would not be disappointed. Surely Minnie would have kept her promise? And it would not have been beyond mother to post a letter to Orleans? But when Mr Browning came into their room in the inn where they had elected to stay in Orleans, the package he was bearing carried no letters for her at all. At least, she supposed not, since he held them all out to his wife and she took them, hands trembling, murmuring, ‘The weight of joy or sorrow?’ Mr Browning, though pleading earnestly to be allowed to stay to support her through the ordeal of discovering how her marriage and flight had been received, was sent away, but he would not allow Wilson to be banished too. ‘I wish to be alone,’ her mistress said, but Mr Browning was adamant – there must be someone at hand in case the shock was too great. So Wilson retreated to the little dressing room and made a show of hanging up clothes: in that way Mrs Browning was, and yet was not, by herself.

  The rooms were so still that it was impossible not to hear envelopes being opened and paper unfolded. The slit of the paper-knife seemed a most sinister sound and Wilson shivered involuntarily. Very, very quietly she smoothed out a dress and picked bits of fluff and Flush’s hairs off it, all the while conscious of the absolute silence which had replaced the crackle of paper. For such a long time it seemed there was no sound at all, not the smallest cough or clearing of the throat, not a hint of any kind of exclamation, and then she heard a little gasp, no more than a sharp intake of breath, and the words, ‘Oh no, no, it is too much.’ Hesitantly, she put the dress down and went to the door. Her mistress was sitting straight-backed, staring out of the window, and down her cheeks the tears ran so thick and fast her whole face was awash. She made not the slightest attempt to stem them but merely allowed them to cascade even down to the collar of her dress without appearing to notice. But, though this deluge of tears showed her distress, her body and the expression on her face did not. She did not shake with sorrow, there was nothing of helplessness in her bearing but rather an almost military composure and in the tilt of her chin and the set of her mouth, pride rather than despair.

  Standing in the doorway, half fearful, Wilson waited. At last, without turning round, her mistress said, ‘You may tell Robert to come in, Wilson, but first wipe my face, dear.’ Eager to be allowed to do so, Wilson came forward with a soft handkerchief and gently dabbed the tears which still fell remorselessly.

  ‘There, ma’am, there,’ she found herself saying, soothingly, ‘it is over now, all over.’

  Her mistress smiled wearily and said, ‘Not over, dear, but just beginning and what a long story it will be.’ Then she took the handkerchief herself and in a determined fashion blotted her eyes and closed them and then when she opened them again the tears had all but stopped.

  Wilson, standing anxiously beside her, could not help seeing the strong, bold handwriting of Mr Barrett scrawled across the paper lying in her mistress’s lap and, noticing her eyes take this in, Mrs Browning took the letter up and said, ‘Yes, it is as I thought, cast off into outer darkness, but that is not the worst – see, here and here, from my brothers, all my brothers, all the same, full of fury, full of unkindness and not a hint of love between them.’

  ‘Not Mr Septimus, ma’am? Not Mr Octavius?’

  ‘Both, all of them, George speaks for all of them, they wish to disown me. Only my sisters …’ and here her voice broke as it had not done when cataloguing her brothers’ cruelty ‘… only my dear sisters love me and forgive me and pray for me and are everything to me that I could wish.’

  Then she did dissolve a little and embraced Wilson who patted her shoulder and tried to offer some comfort before going for Mr Browning. She left them together and took Flush for a walk, pleased that as she left the inn and was saluted by the concierge she was able to say, ‘Au revoir,’ without a tremor. She did not go far but was glad to be out and better able to hide her own bitter disappointment that no one had thought fit to write to her. Tears came into her own eyes to think she had not been worth a line from anyone and she had to scold herself hard for such vanity. Perhaps, once they were settled in Italy with a permanent address, perhaps then she would get letters. And if she wrote, setting out her address clearly, surely there would be a response. It upset her to discover how important letters already seemed to be and she felt for the first time how hard it had been for mother to have her so far away and quite dependent on pieces of fragile paper for any contact. She would write every week, she vowed to herself as she made her way back to the inn, even if mother never wrote to her.

  But when she had brushed Flush and carried him upstairs, Mr Browning was waiting for her and in his hand had two letters. He begged her pardon and said he had not at first seen them, since he was so anxious to find those he knew would be certainly there for his wife and himself. Wilson blushed with pleasure and dropped Flush so suddenly that he yelped with indignation. Mr Browning said she should retire for half an hour and enjoy her letters and she fairly rushed to her little room, barely larger than a cubby-hole, where she sat on her bed and first savoured the envelopes. One from mother, one from Minnie Robinson. She held mother’s, imagining the fuss to get the right postage and the very post box in which it would have been deposited with many a parting kiss. She could see mother now, touching the seal with her lips, sending it on its way with a prayer for its safety. It made her so nostalgic she could hardly open the letter and, when she did, her eyes were misted over so that the words were not clear. She blinked several times and then read mother’s neat hand. The letter was short but full of concern with not a hint of rebuke. It spoke of mother’s delight for Mrs Browning and endorsed the part her daughter had played and wished them all good luck and longed to have news of them before long. Wilson cried a little, partly with relief, partly with pride in her mother’s generosity. Then she opened Minnie’s letter, which was longer and mostly concerned with how Mrs Browning’s news had been received. Wilson could see exactly the scene Minnie described (with considerable relish). She shuddered as she imagined Mr Barrett receiving the news of his daughter’s flight and did not wonder that even Minnie had trembled a little when the master addressed all the servants and forbade them to speak of Miss Elizabeth ever again.

  Wilson sighed as she finished Minnie’s epistle for the third time
. She had felt herself back in Wimpole Street and the weight of that oppressive atmosphere had her by the throat. Here she was, in the sun and light of France and back there it was gloom and dark. Her mistress said these were her sentiments exactly when Wilson confessed her guilt. ‘Well, we must be happy, dear,’ she said that night, ‘for it is a happiness bought at great cost and we must be worthy of it.’ Wilson nodded, pleased to hear her so resolute. ‘Tomorrow we leave for Italy,’ her mistress said, ‘and then it will be a new beginning.’ For me, Wilson, reflected, it already is. She had felt disorientated the moment she left English soil. Every day increased her sense of isolation, her strange feeling of not existing at all. Through the windows of carriages and inns she looked on scene after scene which bewildered her. Nothing was the same, not the trees nor the buildings, not even the colours, and yet she could not precisely put her finger on the foreignness of anything except the language. Only by sticking grimly to the set routines of her mistress’s toilet and the methodical supervision of her welfare could she steady herself. It was as though she were on a merry-go-round, everything whirling and the excitement of the ride tinged with a desire that it should stop. In Italy, it surely must.

  Chapter Fifteen

  WILSON STOOD IN the doorway, rigid with fright. All morning she had put off the expedition and now it could be put off no longer. At noon, the shops would close and before then it was imperative that she procure the essentials needed. Stiffly, a basket on her arm, she left the shelter of the Collegio di Fernandez and walked slowly down the street. It was nearly the end of October but the sun was fierce and she screwed up her eyes. In her hand, she had a list, neatly written out in Italian by her mistress, and if in difficulties had resolved simply to thrust it in each shopkeeper’s hand. She had practised saying, ‘Buongiorno’ and ‘Quanta fa?’ over and over again. If only the shopkeepers would stick to this interchange she would fare well enough, but she greatly feared a torrent of voluble Italian would accompany every attempt at a purchase. It was just so. No sooner had she managed her greeting, followed by her simple request, before a flood of language assailed her. She could only repeat the one phrase she knew and blush and stand her ground and proffer money and hope for the best.

  She was not always sure that she received it. The people seemed kind, smiling and nodding at her, but when she was handed change she found it impossible to reckon up quickly and occasionally, she would discover afterwards, on painfully working out what she should have left, that she could have been cheated. Feeling obliged to report this to the Brownings, she was a little hurt to be laughed at. Italy, they said, was not England and things were not so exact and a few lire here and there would not worry them. In time, they assured her, she would get the hang of it and she was not to distress herself. But it did distress her. She resented being thought of as a fool instead of being respected for her astuteness. And she did not altogether like the way she was looked at, either. Italian men were very forward and verged on the insolent, she decided. They had a way of examining her, with a rapid head-to-toe scrutiny which left her uneasy. Her skin prickled when her palm appeared to be caressed as money changed hands and she cringed before the wide, wide smiles. Twice she came home so near to tears that her mistress could not fail to notice and be concerned. Wilson heard her say to Mr Browning that it was hard for her and she wished dear Wilson had a friend.

  That was the trouble. She had not even a semblance of a friend in Pisa. Never for one moment had she thought she would miss the servants in Wimpole Street to any great degree (though she had known she would miss Lizzie), but now she was desolate without them. She had kept herself to herself, it was true, but though her privacy had been respected she had, over the two years she was there, established a good relationship with everyone in the house and was never in want of someone with whom to pass the time of day. If she had wished a closer contact, there had always been Minnie. Now she had no one. The landlady seemed aloof and she felt that even if there had been no language difficulty she was decidedly not a friend in the making. The housemaid seemed barely able to speak at all and Wilson had heard but not seen the others in the building. She still seemed to live in a frighteningly silent world, dependent on her employers for any conversation at all and what made this situation worse was the realisation that she was excluded from their intimacy. Always, they seemed to stop speaking when she entered the room and, although they would resume again quickly and never fail to draw her into their dialogue, she felt she had interrupted something private and precious. Even alone with her mistress she felt her presence was only endured until Mr Browning reappeared and was acutely conscious that the old freedom between them had gone. She had never, she knew, overstepped the bounds of correct conduct and become familiar, the undoing of so many maids, but there had been a connection that had almost gone.

  Mrs Browning, of course, noticed it herself. Wilson saw herself being observed and waited for the enquiry which was inevitable. ‘Wilson, dear, you seem low in spirits.’ She went on brushing her mistress’s hair and said nothing. ‘Am I right, dear? Are you unhappy?’

  ‘Indeed no, ma’am.’

  ‘Then you are ill?’

  ‘My stomach is a little upset, ma’am, with all the foreign food, but it is nothing.’

  ‘And yet you are dispirited. Do you miss England, is that it?’

  ‘A little, but not overmuch. Really, ma’am, do not concern yourself if I appear a trifle out of sorts. I will soon pick up.’

  ‘Well, if you do not, dear, and wish to go home then you must speak out and I will arrange it. I would not hold you here against your will, nor keep your services if you are unhappy and find it all too much.’

  To her own alarm, this assurance made Wilson feel worse than ever. She suddenly saw how dispensable she was now thought to be. The journey was over, the dramatic transition made, and her mistress fondly imagined she could manage without her. Though she knew this had not been the intention, and that she was being foolish even to consider it, she could not help feeling there had been a hint that she should go home. But what would there be for her if she did? Perhaps a gift of money to tide her over? She doubted that since both Brownings spoke constantly of their poverty. But otherwise, the immediate, desperate need to find another situation. And where would she go to in order to find this new place? Not Wimpole Street. It would be back to uncertainty and confusion and over it all the terrible disappointment of having somehow failed.

  It was the thought of this failure which made her take herself firmly in hand. One thing she had was time, too much of it. Mr Browning was ever with his wife and she was not needed for long stretches of the day. There was no Lizzie to visit, no Minnie to chat to, and though she walked with Flush beside the Arno she was not as enamoured of this promenade as she had been of her turns in Regent’s Park. It seemed to her that she could make no progress in this country until she could speak its language and so she resolved to teach herself from a book. It was a book their landlady produced one day during a confusion over the word for mist (a mist which had suddenly descended in the middle of November). She had opened this book and pointed to ‘misiera’ at the back of it and Wilson had seen it was a kind of dictionary but also a grammar book. The landlady had urged it on her, making it clear after a good deal of sign language and general pantomime, that it had been left behind by two English gentlemen and that she was welcome to it. Gratefully, Wilson took the book and thereafter applied herself for an hour every day to studying it. Since her bed was in a tiny slot of a room so dark she could not make out the print, she took to sitting out on the landing in the afternoons while Mr Browning tore himself away for his daily stroll, and her mistress slept soundly. The book was simply laid out in twenty lessons, with vocabulary to learn at the end of each, and written exercises to do. These she found troublesome but persevered since she liked the action of writing and took some pleasure from covering sheets of paper – a commodity always made generously available by her mistress – with these strange new words
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