Lady's Maid

by Margaret Forster

  — so strong, you will remember how strong she can be when she is determined and out came the ‘I will not’ and ‘I shall not’ and ‘I tell you this’ and ‘I tell you that’, and Mr Browning was quite dumbfounded at her passion and begged her not to upset herself and asked only to say one word more in favour of his argument but she would not hear even that and said the matter was settled and she would thank him not to mention it again. He was in low spirits all day and I think she was sorry to have spoken so and was very tender towards him. All this week she has been careful not to walk too far and has slept in the afternoon which she had vowed she had given up. There have been no more pains but of a morning I have noticed she is very white and when I have asked her if she is feeling nauseous she has said No, very sharply, and that she knows my meaning and will not have it, but, Minnie, I swear she pretends, even to herself and now I think Mr Browning shares my suspicions for I catch him looking at her when she does not know and his eyes wander over her as though searching for evidence. It should not be long in coming for by my reckoning she is now four months gone and will soon show and feel movement and then we shall see.

  Throughout February, Wilson watched and waited but never again mentioned her suspicions. Several times she saw her mistress place a hand lightly on her belly, as though exploring it, but she said nothing and when, dressing and undressing her, she saw unmistakably that her breasts were swollen and fuller than usual, she bit her lip in order not to comment. Often, watching her mistress set off with her husband, followed by an excited Flush, for a walk along the Arno it was all she could do not to call after her to take care, in her condition. It disturbed her that in another way Mrs Browning was not taking care but carrying on with normal relations regardless. It had never been Wilson’s task in Wimpole Street to change the bed linen but here it was and, though she disdained to acknowledge such things even to herself, she could not help but be aware that if there was not already a child conceived there soon would be or it would not be for want of trying.

  She thought it significant that when at last, on the 1st March, to her great joy, she received a letter from Lizzie Treherne, it contained the news that she was expecting again. Mrs Browning, told this news, was not as contemptuous of Billy Treherne as she had previously been. ‘And how old are the first two?’ she asked. Wilson told her almost three and fifteen months. ‘Well, that is not so bad,’ Mrs Browning said, ‘though still too close for comfort. But then what can Lizzie do? Precious little. Please God, after the third she will have a longer rest.’ And then, as Wilson tidied away the breakfast things when Mr Browning had gone to dress, she asked, ‘Crow had a difficult delivery the first time, did she not, Wilson?’

  ‘I believe so, ma’am. Though she is big and strong she was not built well for it, as some women are.’

  ‘Upon what does it depend, do you think?’

  ‘The hips, ma’am. My mother is small and fine-boned but she has the hips for child-bearing and had no trouble.’

  There was a pause. Wilson, knowing full well what game was being played, waited.

  ‘Have you attended a birth, Wilson?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am, long ago, when I was barely sixteen. It was one of the housemaids, ma’am, where I was first employed. She had told no one and was taken with the pains in the night. I was sharing a room with her and there was no time to fetch anyone. She put a gag round her own mouth so her screams would not he heard and held my hand so tight I had the nail marks for weeks. But it was all over in half an hour and she was at work in the kitchen only a little late.’

  ‘Wilson … you speak so calmly … I am breathless …’

  ‘It was nearly ten years ago, ma’am.’

  ‘Even so … to have witnessed such a thing … to have known what to do …’

  ‘Oh, I did not know what to do, not in the least, it was Leah who knew what to do for it was her third. The minute the baby shot out she snatches the gag off and tells me to pick it up by the heels and slap it and poke my finger in its mouth to clear it and then she had the scissors ready to cut the cord and I did it though I nearly fainted and then she had newspaper ready for when – begging your pardon, ma’am – the afterbirth came away. Everything was taken care of by Leah.’

  ‘And the baby, what happened to the baby?’

  ‘He was wrapped in a shawl and that afternoon I took him to the address Leah gave me. “Ask no questions,” she said and I asked none.’

  ‘It makes me faint to hear such a story, Wilson, even though Leah means nothing to me.’

  ‘She was small, ma’am, like you. She had another child after I left but then the mistress found out and she was sent off.’

  ‘Where did she go?’

  ‘I cannot say. I heard the master gave her money.’

  ‘The master? Were they his?’

  ‘Why yes, ma’am, she had the first at fifteen and everyone knew except for me and I soon knew afterwards, after that third.’

  ‘No more, Wilson, I cannot bear it.’

  Wilson could not help smiling as she left the room. All her mistress had wanted to know was that someone in her household had experience and with the perfectly true story of Leah she had put her mind at rest. There was, Wilson reflected as she let Flush out, no comparison of course. Mrs Browning would be unlikely to share Leah’s luck and have a first baby slide out so naturally. There would need to be a doctor and midwife in attendance for such a case, when it was a woman of over forty giving birth. She supposed Dr Cook, who had attended her, would come and bring with him the best midwife he could find. He really should be in attendance now, right from the start, guiding Mrs Browning as to what she should and should not do. Wilson tried to do this herself, but every suggestion she made was rejected throughout March. She told her mistress the room was too hot, that she was walking too far, that she should not eat such spicy meals, but since she could never back up her advice with the information that all these things were said to be bad for pregnant women she had no defence when she was derided. Where, she wondered in despair, would it end?

  It ended on March 21st, the first day of spring and a glorious one quite belying the events inside the Brownings’ apartment. The day before Mrs Browning had gone out in the spring sunshine to walk not along the flat paths beside the Arno but up into the pine woods behind Pisa. She and her husband had taken a carriage there and then climbed in the woods. It was agony for Wilson to let her go, knowing her intention, and even worse, to see her return so unusually flushed and excited. The talk that evening was of moving to Florence the next week and before she retired Wilson was given instructions to begin packing at once. There was no nighttime disturbance, though she half listened for it, but the next morning her mistress announced she would stay in bed. Seeing Wilson’s enquiring look she said, almost crossly, ‘Yes, I have pains, but they are nothing, do not say a word.’ Wilson did not. All morning she stayed close and observed from her mistress’s face that there was a sinister rhythm to these pains and that it was a rhythm which increased in strength as the day wore on. Mr Browning was so agitated he could not keep still and then, at midday, when a groan escaped his wife’s lips, the first she had uttered, he grabbed his coat and, shouting that he would wait no longer, he went for Dr Cook. There were no more protestations from the bed.

  Wilson stood at the bedside, obeying Dr Cook’s instructions. She pulled back the covers to the top of her mistress’s legs and carefully lifted her shift. The doctor placed his hands on her belly, none too gently in her opinion, and prodded and pushed and grunted at what he found. He asked Mrs Browning if she would oblige him with the date of her last bleeding and when she said she had no idea but believed several weeks ago Wilson could not help a sharp intake of breath at the lie. Hearing it, the doctor turned abruptly and stared at her. He really was, Wilson thought, a most unpleasant fellow and she was glad she had not been well enough that night he attended her to notice this. But he asked her civilly enough if she was better aware of her mistress’s regularity and she s
aid she was and that it had last been almost five months ago. This seemed to make the doctor more bad-tempered than ever. He snapped his bag shut quite ferociously and asked for patience though from whom it was not clear. Mrs Browning stared up at him with pleading eyes, which he ignored. Turning on his heel, after a curt good day and the promise to return the next day, Dr Cook left the room. Two minutes later, as Wilson finished tidying the bed and putting a fresh coverlet on top, Mr Browning hurtled into it. ‘Oh, Ba!’ he shouted, and seized her in his arms, crushing her against him. About to absent herself, Wilson was stopped at the door and told on no account to go. ‘You were right, Wilson,’ Mr Browning said, ‘my wife is to have a child and we ought to have listened to you and now we will and perhaps if God is good all will yet be well.’

  Long before the next day ended, Wilson knew it would not be. That evening, after hours of excruciating pain, written so clearly on the poor sufferer’s face, the bleeding started. She knew from her sudden startled expression that something had happened and begged Mr Browning to leave the room for a moment. The blood was dark red and coming away in small clots. ‘Don’t let me see, Wilson,’ Mrs Browning whispered, and turned away while Wilson staunched the flow of blood with a towel she had already prepared. In no time at all it was soaked through and her own heart began to beat faster in panic. She rushed to the door and sent Mr Browning for Dr Cook, telling him to make all speed. He was back with the doctor within ten minutes but before then Wilson had changed the towel three times and by now the clots were huge and the blood unstoppable. Mr Browning was sent both for ice and for hot water, which seemed to confuse him hopelessly, and meanwhile Wilson was instructed to lift her mistress high on the pillows and give her some laudanum. Dr Cook worked quickly and silently. Mesmerised, Wilson stared at his hands which suddenly seemed deft and confident, first pressing and then holding. He took an instrument from his bag and held Mrs Browning’s legs open, or so it seemed, and then appeared to delve inside her and the next moment a hideous mess of blue-black matter oozed out of her. The doctor lifted it clear and put it onto a silver dish and examined it briefly before returning his attention to the patient. More blood was flowing, but not so fast and without clots. He checked inside – Wilson winced as she felt her mistress shudder and grip her hand – and then he motioned for Wilson to use the hot water to wash the blood away and told her to put another towel there and observe it closely for the next hour.

  ‘Well, madam,’ he said at last, ‘I am sorry to tell you you have had a miscarriage of five months’ duration and had you called me earlier you need not have had it at all, in my opinion.’

  Hearing this, Wilson raged at the cruelty of it, but her mistress merely opened her eyes and murmured, ‘Five months! Only imagine!’

  But Mr Browning, who came in as the disgruntled doctor left, was inconsolable. He threw himself on the bed and wept as though his heart would break and Wilson found tears streaming down her own face at the sight of his devastation. She left them together for a moment while she disposed of the blood-stained towels and carried the covered dish with the foetus in it outside. It should, the doctor had said, be burnt at once, but where? She could not burn it on their own fire. Slowly, she walked down the stairs, her pitiful burden filling her hands, and at the bottom turned into the landlady’s kitchen where a great fire roared. There was no one about. She uncovered the dish and looked at the slimy, bulbous lump of what reminded her of liver. Her eyes went over it, seeing all too clearly the fronds that were arms and legs and the wobbly sac that was a head and then she took in the fact that it would have been a girl. The fire spat and stung as she slid the unborn child into it and she watched repelled as it was devoured. She would never tell anyone, not even her mistress herself. If asked, she would say she had not looked or that it was too early to discern the sex, and she was sure Dr Cook would hardly have been interested enough to notice.

  The landlady, coming into her kitchen, was avid for news but Wilson gave her none. ‘My mistress has miscarried,’ she said stiffly. ‘I would thank you to be considerate.’ The only satisfaction was being able to say it in Italian.

  Chapter Sixteen

  WILSON WRAPPED THE water-melon in a net and attached it to a thin rope and then slowly lowered it into the well, keeping it away from the rough stone sides. She let it go just under the water and then secured the rope on the handle of the winding mechanism. Everyone had drawn their water for the day and she had no fear the melon would be tampered with. This was the only way to get it cool as it should be, as her mistress liked it, and today being the Brownings’ wedding anniversary she wished to present them with slices of the pink fruit as iced as she could make it. Back in the kitchen she prepared the knead cakes for tea, another treat, though in the hot weather not so appropriate. She perspired freely as she struggled to get the oven to the right heat and her hands were slippy as she turned out and shaped the dough. A raw, north-eastern day was needed for knead cakes and an appetite all the sharper for battling with a keen wind. She cooked the cakes on top of the oven, flipping them over with a knife when they sizzled. The young Italian girl who now helped her watched fascinated and Wilson lectured her all the time in a mixture of Italian and English, instructing her as to the niceties of a perfect knead cake. The girl was slow but willing and though there was hardly room for two of them in the tiny corner called a kitchen, Wilson enjoyed her company. She sang and laughed a lot and was cheerful.

  Wilson herself felt cheerful. As she changed her dress, ready for the little ceremony she planned to make of the presentation to her employers of melon and knead cakes, she naturally thought back over the year. Only a year since that day she had crept out of 50 Wimpole Street and made her way to Marylebone Street with Miss Elizabeth as she then was – only a year and yet it seemed a century. Smoothing her hair, she reflected how changed she was, and for the better. That restlessness which had plagued her, that sense of something missing, had gone. ‘You will soon get over the hump,’ Minnie had written when, back in January, she had been low enough to think she had made a mistake. Right from the day they had arrived in Florence she had begun to think she might make a go of her new life and not need to be so brave. For a start, she had company. Florence was lively and full of English and in no time at all she had been greeting other young English women, also ladies’ maids, whom she saw day after day in the course of her shopping and walks with Flush. She had not even had to brace herself to make the first move but had been approached directly in the button shop by Sarah Allen, maid to a Mrs Loftus, whose husband was ‘something’ in the diplomatic service. Sarah was unmistakably English with her very white skin and yellow hair, the yellow of a strong cheese and not exactly attractive. But even had her looks not marked her out, Sarah’s loud voice would have done so. She was a Londoner and had an accent Wilson could tell she had tried to work on and failed. Listening to her, as she sorted through a tray of pearl shirt buttons – Mr Browning was very particular about buttons matching – Wilson felt rather shocked that this English woman hardly made an attempt at Italian. A few words from Wilson procured what she was after in the shop, and their friendship was made (though Wilson was not sure she wanted it). Sarah Allen latched onto her and would not let go, that was the truth. But she was bold and talkative and at her side Wilson had seen more of Florentine life than her own mistress, who commented, not without envy, on her social life. Each day now she was rushing through her work in order to meet Sarah and together they promenaded through the streets and squares, endlessly engaged in gossip and congratulating themselves on their own luck at having such desirable situations. ‘I would not go back to London for all the tea in China,’ Sarah declared, and although not so vehement, Wilson was inclined to share her enthusiasm for Florence where the sun shone every day and the vitality of the city invigorated every inhabitant.

  Ready at last, she went for the melon, and prepared the feast on a tray. Butter for the still hot knead cakes and honey and some figs and grapes as well as the melon. The min
ute she heard the bell tinkling in the drawing room she picked up the tray and walked in, smiling broadly. ‘Happy Anniversary, madam, sir,’ she said, blushing, and Mrs Browning clapped her hands and looked at her husband and they both burst out laughing. ‘We had a bet, Wilson, as to whether you would realise it was our day,’ her mistress said.

  ‘As if I could forget, ma’am.’

  ‘Do you remember how I almost fainted …’

  ‘… I thought we would never reach the church …’

  ‘Oh, how terrified I was and how strong you were, dear.’ And at the endearment, Mrs Browning held out her hand and went on, ‘It would please us both, Wilson, if you would join us for tea this once.’

  Blushing even more deeply, Wilson went for another cup and saucer and when she returned Mrs Browning waited for her to sit before handing her a small package. ‘It is from both of us, dear, as a memorial of that day you stood by us, for without your help we would not be here.’

  ‘And what a sin that would be,’ Mr Browning murmured.

  Wilson felt close to tears. She had to take a deep breath before opening the box in which lay a turquoise brooch on a bed of red velvet. Staring at it for several seconds before daring to touch it, she at last picked it up and turned it over and over. It was such a lovely thing, bright but delicate, the turquoise in the shape of a star and the gold setting making the star into a circle.

  ‘Will you not pin it on, dear?’ Mrs Browning asked and leaned forward to do it herself. ‘There, it looks very well and brings out the blue in your eyes.’

  All that evening, while Florence exploded in a grand display of fireworks and the streets were thronged with dancing crowds – the celebration to mark the Grand Duke’s gift of certain civil liberties had coincided with the Brownings’ wedding anniversary – Wilson felt an inner elation that matched the festive mood of the city. She had not the faintest idea why there was such jubilation but hardly cared. With Sarah holding her hand so that they would not be separated in the dense crowds she found herself singing and chanting with the best of them and when flowers were offered she took them and threaded them in her hair like everyone else and marvelled at how happy everyone was. Up above, she caught a brief glimpse of her mistress sitting on the balcony of the Casa Guidi watching and then she and Sarah were whirled away towards the Piazza Pitti and lost sight of home. But she had not a tremor of fear; as she realised this, there flashed into her mind a vision of her mistress and herself, in Shoreditch, when they were jostled by that other terrifying crowd and she knew the difference was more than mere circumstance. Italian men no longer seemed threatening nor did she interpret their curiosity as she once had done. There was a courtesy present, even in a street crowd, which impressed her.