Lady's Maid

by Margaret Forster

  At two in the morning she was woken by Flush growling and heard a loud and prolonged moan. She took a candle and went to the foot of the ladder by which Vincenzo ascended to his sleeping quarters. She called his name but received only a gasp in reply. Hesitating, for she had no desire to see the man in his bed, she heard another cry of such pain that she turned at once and went to rouse Mr Browning. He immediately ordered Wilson to tell the porter to go for a doctor. She fled down the stairs and the porter for once took his cue from her flying feet and was willing to go for the doctor. Vincenzo was bled, with Wilson acting as nurse, a task she did not enjoy. The man looked dreadful, his eyes glazed and his face running with perspiration. The verdict was that Vincenzo was suffering from acute indigestion and ought to rest. But where? Hearing the Brownings discuss this, Wilson was again aware of a distinction between herself and any other servant. Not for a moment was it suggested that Vincenzo should be looked after in the Casa Guidi until he was well. On the contrary, there was an indecent haste in the way he was moved to a cheap lodging house that very morning clutching a month’s wages and an additional gift of money. The air of relief when he had been removed was palpable and to Wilson both distressing and threatening – such was the fate of a servant and for all her own sense of security it made her shiver.

  She went to enquire after Vincenzo, taking an egg custard she had made, the following day and returned with dramatic news, that he was in hospital with miliary fever.

  What happened to the man when he left hospital Wilson never knew. He had his wages a month ahead but after that, what? It disturbed her to think of him, weak and wretched, with no one to care for him and if she had had less fear of carrying disease she would have attempted to help him. As it was, energies in the Casa Guidi were concentrated on selecting a new servant before the exodus for the summer to Bagni di Lucca. Mrs Browning wanted no more mistakes: applicants must be interviewed during the day and have a minimum of three references which would be carefully scrutinised and checked. ‘And Robert,’ Wilson heard her plead, ‘health is of the utmost concern. You cannot have looked at Vincenzo, dear, and judged him bursting with health. I defy you to say so. Look carefully, Robert, appraise a man’s strength and vigour first and foremost.’ There followed a spirited defence of his interviewing technique by Mr Browning, who roundly condemned strength and vigour as the most important aspects of a servant’s character. ‘Now, Ba,’ he remonstrated, ‘where should we be if we took on a great oaf who could fell a tree with one blow and carry me in one hand downstairs if the fellow was so stupid and so inexperienced that he could only burn the dinner and did not know how to lay out clothes and could not for the life of him work out the formula for opening the door and showing people in? Health yes, but strength no.’

  There were six other applicants but none to compare with the seventh. Wilson, seeing Ferdinando Romagnoli for the first time felt that quickening of the heartbeat, that tremor of the nerves, which she had been waiting for all her adult life. It surprised and even shocked her. What had Ellen said of her Albert? That her stomach turned to water and she could not gainsay him. What had her mistress said of her husband on that far-off day they had recently celebrated? That she took one look and knew she was irresistibly attracted. And what a fool I was, Wilson thought, to imagine Timothy or Reginald or Leonardo meant anything to me. But she was quick to hide her own confusion, not by one flicker of expression betraying any interest but rather the reverse. The more attracted she felt the more important it seemed to be careful, not to blush, not to smile too invitingly, not to suggest in any way that she was smitten. She kept her eyes down and her ears open and served the Brownings their tea on the day Ferdinando was engaged as though nothing could interest her less. But writing to Lizzie all caution was allowed to disappear, though she warned her friend:

  — you must not tell anyone of my foolishness Lizzie only I need to share my excitement with someone and indeed you are the safest recipient by far of my confession which verges on the downright silly. It was as other women have said and I have scorned them for it and in truth I am dazzled by his looks which is not wise. Signor Righi, if you remember, though you may not as I hardly do myself, Leonardo Righi, then, was tall and handsome but always in a military way if you take my meaning. He was correct and impressive but did not yield and so there was a formality in all he did which I often judged might signify a coldness. Ferdinando Romagnoli is quite otherwise. He too is tall and handsome but with no rigidity in his bearing at all. Instead he is easy and bent at once to lift Pen and enslaved him immediately. He has thick black hair, worn shorter than most, and a broad face upon which there is almost always a smile showing good teeth as my mistress noted. His eyebrows are thick and bushy and he has a moustache of the same variety. He is thirty-six years old, the same age you know I am, and served as a volunteer in the 1848 Rising which has greatly endeared him to his new employers. His family live in a village beyond Fiesole and he seems fond of them so he is not a solitary character. You will ask Lizzie and I will not beat about the bush but tell you at once that by some miracle he is not married. Mrs Browning thought this odd and wondered why and hoped it did not mean he was of a bad character with women which Mr Browning took exception to and said he hoped that since he himself was unmarried at the age of thirty-four she had never deduced it meant he had such a character. There are many reasons a man may not have married he said and one may be he has never found the right woman and has wisely waited as I did for you. Not that I think of marriage, Lizzie, being not so foolish as to judge a man on his appearance but to you I will not deny my relief at Ferdinando’s single state. Meanwhile he fits in very easily being somewhere between Alessandro and Vincenzo and having the better part of each without the worst which is to say he is cheerful but not insufferably so and attentive without being servile. He is perhaps less of a cook than Alessandro was but infinitely more of a valet and butler than poor Vincenzo. We shall better see how he fares when we go to Lucca, a place as you know Lizzie I do not have much fondness for but there is no denying it is at least cool and good for the child and may not prove so inhospitable upon this occasion.

  She did not add that her hopes of a livelier time rested on the new man-servant’s charms rather than on the place itself which once more was the quieter of the hill villages at Lucca. At least the house taken from the middle of July was large and they were not, as they had been before, squashed into small rooms. She slept with Pen at one end of the house and Ferdinando slept at the other next to the kitchen with the Brownings and the living quarters in between. If she had wished it would in those circumstances have been possible for Wilson to avoid seeing much of her fellow servant but as it was she rather regretted the distance between them and so did Pen. Ferdinando was quickly his most intimate friend with whom he wished to spend every minute of the day. Hardly had he woken, before he was listening for Ferdinando’s whistle outside his window, the signal that he was ready and waiting to take Pen to the stream. Naturally, Wilson had to go with him – how could she leave a five-year-old child? Why, anything might happen since men were known not to take the care a woman did. Her mistress, told this, stared at her strangely and smiled and said doubtless she was right, anything could happen …

  So each morning, before either of the Brownings was astir, Pen and Ferdinando and Wilson made their way through the gardens to the field leading to the stream. Even at eight the sun, though low in the sky still, was hot and a haze rose off the grasses waving almost imperceptibly in the smallest of breezes which would soon disappear. A cock crowed and was answered by another and a donkey brayed exhaustingly from across the stream. Ferdinando carried Pen on his shoulders and sang as he walked, a song he had learned in ’48, which he was teaching Pen. His old gun was slung on his arm and every now and again Pen would lean down and touch the muzzle and shiver and Wilson would check for the thousandth time that it was not loaded and only carried to remind Ferdinando of his rabbit- and not his man-killing days. Once at the stream, Wilso
n spread a blanket she had brought and made herself comfortable while Pen gathered sticks and bigger bits of wood and Ferdinando whittled away with his knife and fashioned them into boats and then both of them ran up and down the bank shrieking and jumping as these ‘boats’ raced down the stream. Then Ferdinando would repair the stepping-stone ford he had made and encourage Pen to go from one rock to another and back again, making the small boy feel a hero for successfully negotiating the rushing cataracts that to him were like the Niagara Falls.

  There was little for Wilson to do, that morning hour, except daydream. She pulled a grass and sucked the end and watched the man and the boy through half-closed eyes. They were so very different, one so dark and strong and powerful, the other so fair and fragile and slender. Ferdinando as a boy must have looked very striking. Tall, he would have been, even as a child, with always that look of confidence that comes from strength. He would have had the man he was to be stamped on him in a way Pen did not. With Ferdinando all that had to happen was growth whereas with a child like Pen the transition from boy to man needed a transformation so complete it was impossible to imagine the finished product. When Ferdinando took his shoes off and rolled up his breeches to wade into the stream after an escaped boat, or when he threw off his jacket and opened his shirt towards the end of their morning hour as the sun turned fierce already, Wilson could hardly avoid a sharp intake of breath at the sight of his muscular brown legs and the glimpse of the hollow at the base of his throat. She blushed even though neither man nor child looked her way and turned aside for a moment to hide her confusion which deepened every day. Ferdinando had an attractiveness everyone felt. In his company both men and women smiled and felt the better for being with him. But the pull towards him which Wilson felt went far beyond this. She wanted Ferdinando not only to be with her but to touch her and yet she felt if he did she would die of pleasure.

  There was no sign of such an impending death. Ferdinando was respect itself. He still called her Mrs Wilson and was deferential, though not in Vincenzo’s way. There was not the faintest inkling that he was interested in her or admired her or wished to know her on another footing and Wilson did not know how to interpret his attitude. He was not cold towards her – he was not cold towards anyone – but in the glances he gave her she could discern no message. She did not know what to do beyond being as pleasant and amiable as possible and taking every opportunity, whether he knew it or not, to be in his company. She used Pen shamelessly, but began to wonder by the middle of September whether this was as clever as she had thought. While Pen was with her how, after all, could Ferdinando see her as anything but a nurse? And since he was genuinely fond of the boy he would never neglect him to prefer her. They were never alone, not until one day when Pen went to spend the day with the Storys at the next village.

  If Pen doted on Ferdinando he was hardly less enamoured of Edith and Joe, the nine- and six-year-old children of William Wetmore Story, an American sculptor, who also lived in Florence. When first they had arrived in Lucca, Wilson had taken one look at Mrs Story and decided she would not do as a friend for her own mistress, being too obviously flirtatious and gushing. But whether it was because of a need for the companionship of women or that Emelyn Story had hidden qualities, the two mothers became good friends and so therefore did the families. Wilson approved of the friendship, while secretly preserving reservations as to Mrs Story’s true character, because it brought Pen into the company of other children. She was happy to have Edith and Joe in her charge, upon occasion, as well as Pen and she and Ferdinando took them all off on picnics while the parents sat and talked poetry and politics. Surrounded by all of them, Wilson felt she was head of a ready-made family, with Ferdinando the robust father. It was play-acting of the most ridiculous sort, but since none knew of it, harmless. Edith and Joe, quite delightful children with none of that spoiled nature Wilson had seen too much of in children of their station in life, adored Ferdinando as much as Pen did. He was their hero, breathing fire and adventure with his tales of his exploits in the ’48, and he could do all the things their own fathers never thought of doing. Ferdinando climbed trees for them and made rope swings and built tree-houses and was at every turn energetic and daring. It was hard for them, and harder for him, when he returned to cook or appeared to wait upon them in the house in his capacity as servant – they would hardly accept him in that role.

  For weeks, Edith and Joe came to visit Pen but at last, when there was just beginning to be a chill in the air at night, Pen agreed to go to them if Ferdinando as well as Wilson would take and collect him. His excitement was terrible. Clutching him to her heart, his mother murmured that she understood because she had felt exactly the same as a child. When the moment came to wave her goodbye Pen, perched on his pony, cried piteously, as though going to the North Pole for a year, and it was only Ferdinando’s inspiration in giving him his empty old gun to hold, so he might pretend he was a soldier, that saved the day. But once at the Storys, his fear evaporated and Wilson left him running happily after a pig with Edith and Joe. She and Ferdinando left together, promising to return in eight hours, when the sun was beginning to set. They walked slowly back down the hill, the pony left grazing in the Story’s orchard. It was odd not to have Pen between them, endlessly claiming every moment of their attention. Ferdinando remarked how good it would be for Pen to have such a day and Wilson agreed. Then there was silence for another quarter of a mile until at last Ferdinando said quietly, ‘What will you do with yourself, Mrs Wilson, without the boy tied to you?’

  Afterwards, Wilson confessed she had never thought to say anything so bold in her life to such an innocent enquiry. When once she would have assured him she had plenty of work, or outlined in detail a routine of sewing and mending, or vowed her mistress had every claim on her attention still, now she heard herself say, ‘I am fancy-free and wondering how best to celebrate.’ It was astonishing and her blush, once the words were out, so violent even her eyes burnt. Ferdinando laughed and slapped his thigh and said so was he, free as a bird for the day, and with all manner of plans to make the most of it. What Wilson then loved most was how he instantly assumed the lead. They both went back to the Casa Tolomei to report Pen’s safe arrival and happiness and to check they were not wanted until late afternoon and then, with what Wilson supposed must be described as some cunning though she did not like to think of it as such, they went their separate ways and met in the tiny village square. Ferdinando had a basket with him, covered with a cloth, and was mysterious about its contents. He said he would take Wilson to a secret place she would much admire and so they set off up a track, with Ferdinando every now and again taking Wilson’s elbow to help her over a rough bit. Soon they came to a narrower track which branched off the main one and here Ferdinando slashed through the undergrowth so that nothing would catch on her gown. She was panting a little with the exertion and was relieved to find they were now on the level, with no more climbing. Suddenly, the thick bushes parted and they came to a glade where the stream widened into a pool. All around the trees closed in but, where the pool was, the grass was clear and short, as though it were a lawn, and the sun directly overhead shone upon it like a spotlight. Wilson was dazzled by the brilliant light and drew back into the bushes but Ferdinando pointed to a spot the other side of the pool where the branches of a huge elder tree shaded a flat-topped rock.

  There they sat and picnicked. Cold chicken came out of the basket and cheese and bread and a perfect water-melon and a flagon of white wine which was set to cool in the water. Ferdinando whistled as he laid out the food and smiled at Wilson and did not know that in her answering smile was the memory of another picnic in Richmond Park and the determination that came from it not to lose another God-given chance.

  ‘Well, Mrs Wilson …’ Ferdinando began but she stopped him.

  ‘Why do you address me so?’ she asked. ‘I am Lily to Pen and to my friends.’

  ‘Then I can count myself as a friend?’

  ‘What el
se? Would I follow an enemy and eat with him?’

  ‘Well then, Lily, I was going to say it is a long time since I had such pleasure as this.’

  ‘And a long time since I did, likewise.’

  ‘When I was young, I wanted only to be a soldier.’

  ‘And when I was young I wanted only to be a bride.’

  ‘A bride!’

  ‘A bride, in white with orange blossom in my hair.’

  He picked a yellow flower from the grass, as like to an English buttercup as ever she had seen, and gently threaded it into her hair. For a man so large his touch was gentle and his strong fingers nimble. It crossed her mind he had done this before and so there was some asperity in her tone when she added, ‘Yes, a bride, how foolish I was, to be sure.’

  ‘Why foolish?’

  ‘There are better things in life to want than being a bride.’

  ‘You say so? What things, then?’

  ‘Oh, I like my independence.’ Then she laughed, and leaning back against the rock, shaded her eyes to look up at the sun. ‘In a manner of speaking, of course, not really in my circumstances having such a fine thing as independence. But my mother and sisters …’ She stopped. Sheffield seemed so far away. A year ago, its wet, grey cold streets and the deprivation of mother’s life had made her shudder and now, in the sun, she shuddered again.