Lady's Maid

by Margaret Forster

  ‘The trattoria sent it late, sir,’ Wilson gasped, putting the tray down as carefully as she could manage, longing to escape from the room.

  ‘Sent it late!’ he roared. ‘And why was it not made plain by you – by you – the consequences of such slackness, eh? Are you the landlady? Are you? Is it you who collects my money week after week? And for what? To bring my dinner late, far past the hour, you disgusting, ugly fool?’

  The snarl on his face, twisted horribly with contempt, was terrifying to behold but worse was the way he wiped the saliva away from his slobbering mouth with his sleeve and seemed to cast it towards her. She began to back out of the room, trying to focus on a picture hanging behind the old man on the wall above the mantelpiece, a weird dark picture in which an angel of vengeance flew across a purple sky lit by flashes of lightning, sword in hand, and below a man with blood streaming from his neck prayed for mercy. But Mr Landor advanced upon her, step by step and because she could no longer bear to look at him and because his distorted face seemed to merge with the angel’s she turned to dash for the door. A crash behind her made her turn and she saw the enraged old man had hurled his soup dish at the far wall where it hit the pretty paper and ran in thin trickles down onto the pale-grey carpet. ‘Oh, I will never get it clean!’ ran through her mind, but already there was worse to witness for a plate of spinach was already spattered on the tiles of the fireplace and a bowl of zucchini sailed out of the window. But what brought her to the point of retaliation was the sight of his hands mauling a plate of sliced mutton, digging his fingers into the pieces of meat and snatching them up and trying to screw them up like pieces of paper and hurl them at the bookcase. She could not stand it another minute. Something snapped inside her and she found herself grabbing the mutton and wresting the plate, with what was left of the uncut joint still on it, and running with it from his crazed presence. He followed her, howling and swearing, so that Teresa, who had come out of the kitchen at the tremendous noise, cowered against the door and put up her arms to protect herself from what she believed would be an attack. Wilson pushed her back into the room, the mutton skidding from the plate as she did so, and locked it behind her, then dragged a chest in front. Panting, she waited, but the madman never paused, seeming to hurtle out into the street still cursing and yelling. Then there was silence and she sat down on the chest, weeping and shaking.

  Of course, as she had guessed, he went into the Casa Guidi, to complain to the Brownings. An hour later, she was sent for and went as she was, still in the apron spotted with bits of meat and potato where they had clung to her as she fought for them. Her hair was untidy and her face still on fire and she knew she presented a distraught sight. To her relief, Mr Landor was not present. ‘Now Wilson,’ Mr Browning began, looking grave and weary, ‘what is this we hear of you ill-treating your guest, our friend?’

  ‘Ill-treating? Oh sir, do you look at me and say you see someone who has been doing the ill-treating?’ And she promptly burst into tears, throwing her soiled apron over her head to hide her humiliation. She felt Mr Browning’s arm round her and the gentlest of pressures as he pushed her into a seat. He waited. Her tears dried and she pulled her apron away, ashamed and miserable. ‘You do not know, sir, the provocation. What I must endure from Mr Landor, night and day. There are many can tell you what I suffer at his hands though I serve him as best I can. Never have I been so reviled, never, and I have taken it all, knowing him to be old and alone, and I …’

  ‘You have done very well, Wilson, and we all know it,’ Mrs Browning said.

  ‘We did not pretend it would be easy,’ Mrs Browning murmured, ‘which is why you are recompensed so handsomely, Wilson.’

  ‘Money cannot soften some things,’ Wilson said ‘and you cannot begin to imagine the insults, the nature of the insults, as though I were a woman of the streets …’ and she began to weep again.

  ‘He can be violent, I admit,’ Mr Browning said, ‘but he is not himself when he launches into these diatribes and you must remember that, Wilson.’

  ‘Sir, even when he is not angry you do not know his habits, how filthy he can be and expect me – ’

  ‘Wilson, I do not think you need enumerate Mr Landor’s faults and I repeat, we know he is difficult, but in a man of his years, with his temperament, and cast out by his wife – ’

  ‘She was wise, sir.’

  ‘That is not for you to judge, Wilson.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Now let us come to the point: are you willing to overlook this – this regrettable incident and try again?’

  She was silent a moment, thinking of Oreste and her journey to England and the future of her family and how it rested largely at the moment on Mr Landor’s £30 a year. ‘I have no choice, sir. I am bound to keep him or be much the worse off.’

  ‘Then try, dear,’ Mrs Browning urged, ‘not to get in a temper to match his, rise above the poor old gentleman’s tantrums and meet his ravings with dignity.’

  ‘I will try,’ Wilson said stiffly, barely able to get the words out.

  ‘He has agreed to act as though nothing had happened,’ Mr Browning said. It angered her that he appeared to think this amounted to a great concession.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, very quietly, ‘he is expert at that, sir. But the evidence of what did happen will be all round us, the wallpaper being ruined where the soup dripped down it and the carpet, I should think, impossible to clean.’

  ‘It will be paid for,’ Mr Browning said, and again she was angry. She did not care what money was given for repairs. Tired, she got to her feet and made to leave.

  When she got to the top of the staircase and Mr Browning had gone back inside his apartment, she suddenly felt so ill she had to sit down on the stone step and compose herself before going on. Head in her hands, she tried to pull herself together. For the sake of Oreste, she must be cool and calm and take matters into her own hands instead of waiting so feebly for fate to help her. She ought, there and then, while with the Brownings, to have chosen that moment to outline her plan and ask for their co-operation. What, after all, could they do with Mr Landor should she turn him out? She could get other boarders, he would never, with his reputation, be taken in by any other landlady in Florence no matter what was paid. Slowly, she began to climb the stairs again, resolved to return and put her case. Hesitantly, she pushed open the door, which stood ajar to let in what air there was, and entered the hall. They would still be in the little sitting room. Ferdinando was out, she knew, and so were Pen and Annunciata if the total silence was any indication. As she lifted her hand to knock on the open door to signal her return, she heard Mrs Browning’s light, high voice say, ‘I am tired of her, Robert, truly I am. It is nothing but trouble, nothing but her problems when we have enough of our own.’

  ‘That is hardly fair, Ba.’

  ‘Of course it is not fair, but it is true. I do not even like to see her, it makes me uncomfortable and I wish her gone, as quickly as possible.’

  ‘People in trouble are uncomfortable, but it is hardly their choice.’

  ‘She lays it at our door, I am sure, and yet it is not our fault she is in difficulties.’

  ‘It is partly our fault – we prevailed upon her to take Landor.’

  ‘I did not mean that. It is her whole situation – she is so mournful and silently accusing and sometimes, Robert, I think her as mad as Landor with all this nonsense she makes of the Bible from time to time. I am really very tired of her.’

  ‘That is a little hard …’

  ‘Then I am a little hard. For example, what of Siena? Are we to cart her with us there next month?’

  ‘We can hardly leave Landor here with her – think what might happen, on days like today, were we not here to be a calming influence!’

  ‘Both might murder the other and have done with it.’

  ‘Ba! You are savage beyond reason.’

  ‘There is no reason in it, I am most unreasonable and know it.’

  ‘B
ut not proud of being so, I hope?’

  ‘I hear the rebuke, Robert. No, not proud, ashamed, but unable to suppress the wicked thought. What of Siena?’

  ‘We must take Landor, and if he goes, Wilson must go to look after him for we cannot and the Storys cannot be imposed upon again. There is no other solution.’

  ‘Not if one is good, as you are.’

  Then there was silence. Numb, Wilson turned once more and crept out, all in a run, all the way back to her own home. Pilade came stumbling out to greet her and she clung to him, crushing him to her and stroking his hair and crooning to him. More than any other comfort his delighted kisses in return soothed her and eventually she was able to put him down and go into the kitchen to speak to Teresa about the day’s duties. But Teresa was not there. The kitchen girl, standing scraping carrots at the table, looked frightened and said Teresa had gone and gone, she had said, for good. Wilson could not believe it but it was true. Her younger brother was sent by Teresa later in the day to say she would not be returning to a house where a dangerous lunatic lived and no one could expect her to – she would rather forfeit that week’s wages than wait long enough to give notice. And then, on top of such bad news, came another message, a letter from Phoebe saying she could not after all repay Wilson’s kindness by standing in for her because she had this very day been ordered back to England and arrangements she had no part in had been made. The world, thought Wilson that night, was crumbling around her no matter how hard she tried.

  A month later, this was how Mrs Browning described her own world. She lay in the garden of the Villa Alberti near Siena with Wilson shelling peas at her feet and Pilade picking grasses and admiring each one extravagantly. ‘The world is crumbling around me, Wilson,’ she said, the words so faint only a finely attuned ear could have heard them. In her hand she held the letter from England that had come that morning and Wilson knew what it contained: news of Miss Henrietta, of Mrs Surtees Cook, who was mortally ill with cancer of the womb. Her husband’s letter had reached them as soon as they arrived in their summer resting place and had plunged them all into abject misery. To Wilson, it had seemed all of a piece, all part of her own unhappiness, of that weary feeling that nothing mattered, nothing, no amount of effort could alter what was to happen. All there was left to do was to stumble on, dutifully following the tracks on the ground as they appeared. She had given up all hope of ever bringing Oreste over. Day after day, she did what was expected of her and there was so little fire left in her that, when Mr Landor emptied a jug of red wine over a white damask tablecloth and kicked in her direction a cushion which split and sent feathers flying everywhere, she said not a word. She cleaned up the room, did not even hear his curses, and thought how nothing could affect her any longer.

  But Miss Henrietta’s illness did. Minnie had written to her, a short and agonising note, penned with obvious difficulty, and she had replied at length, describing her

  — horror, Minnie, to hear of these floodings and most of all of the terrible pain which made my own insides contract in sympathy. I imagine it to be like the worst kind of monthly cramp and the most fierce of labour pains but perhaps it is even worse. Her sister thinks of this pain all day and night and says it is the worst part and I think it is, worse even than how it is to end. I must tell you Minnie that things have not been good between my old beloved mistress and me which it is not fitting that I should now go into but this blow has brought us closer together in our love and concern for Miss Henrietta. Who would have thought it would be her, Minnie? Always the strong one, never ailing like her sisters, and so happy with her three little children. It does not bear thinking about and yet we think of it all day long in this pretty place, not noticing the sun and flowers. Mrs Browning likes to have me with her now, no other person will do, and we talk of the old days and Miss Henrietta slipping off to Regent’s Park to walk with Mr Surtees Cook and the squeezes she loved to hold in Wimpole Street when her father was away. Do you remember the jellies you made for her, Minnie? There is no one else can remember except you Wilson Mrs Browning says to me not even Robert, and it is true.

  It was impossible to convey to Minnie or anyone else how this new closeness lifted her misery in a way nothing else could have done and yet Wilson herself marked how curious it was that she should feel forgiven when there was nothing to forgive. Without her wishing it to be so, it seemed in the nature of things for her always to seek favour and her mistress to bestow it. Always, maid or matron, she was the supplicant and her standing varied with her usefulness. Now, she was more than useful, she was necessary and because she was necessary her faults faded into insignificance. She was called upon, day after day, to sustain Mrs Browning in her awful anxiety and she did it willingly, dragging out from the furthermost corners of her memory evidence of Miss Henrietta’s strength and fortitude together with examples of women of whom she had heard who had survived this disease. She held out hope and it was taken eagerly and when with each letter the hope waned she was ready to support Mrs Browning’s own faith that death was but an extension of life and not to be feared.

  All she could not share was Mrs Browning’s other intense fever, her other passion. Here, she took a step back and called on Ferdinando to discuss Garibaldi and his Red Shirts and the promises of Cavour – they were names to her and nothing more. She had not the least interest in the fortunes of Italy, did not care that once more liberty and unity were the watchwords, and it astonished her that Mrs Browning could seem as anxious about war as she did about her sister’s health. Listening to her and Ferdinando discussing the latest onslaught – Piedmontese troops were said to be sweeping south throughout the summer – Wilson could hardly believe the enthusiasm displayed. What did it matter who ruled whom? What difference did it make, if you were a woman? She watched Pilade run around laughing and trying to catch butterflies and heard Pen shrieking in the distance as he urged his pony to a faster trot and she knew she did not care a jot for Garibaldi or Cavour or any other Italian hero. Her concerns were here, in front of her, concerns that were domestic and intimate and not to be spoken of in the same breath as supposedly greater events. She did not think them greater, failed entirely to see why she should. Mrs Browning, Ferdinando swore, was more like a man than a woman and an Italian man at that. He adored her for it and when Wilson chose to murmur against her interest, saying she could not see how it could be real, he was angry and said she was narrow and selfish, like most women.

  Mrs Browning said much the same to her, observing how she did not join in when Garibaldi’s victories were being discussed nor did she rejoice.

  ‘You have no interest in these great events, Wilson,’ she said, a statement rather than a question.

  ‘No, ma’am, and I do not see why I should.’

  ‘Well, dear, there are good reasons. You are married to an Italian, you live in Italy, what happens here is of great importance to your future.’

  ‘My future, ma’am? I cannot see how this war can affect my future. My life is set to go on as it always has and no war can change it that I can see.’

  ‘Then you are a trifle short-sighted and do not see the general for the particular. The future of your children will be very much affected by who rules their country.’

  ‘Of my child, ma’am.’

  ‘Your child? No, your children. Your two sons.’

  ‘Only one is here. The other never will be. I must think of him as English and belonging to my sister.’

  ‘Wilson! You shock me. You cannot abandon Oreste thus – come, it is a moment of despondency that is all, say it is.’

  ‘No, ma’am, it is accepting the truth. I have tried to bring him to me and failed and now I cannot hope any longer. He is four years old and will not remember me.’

  ‘Four years is very little in a lifetime, dear.’

  ‘Four years is very long in his, ma’am.’

  ‘And his father, what does Ferdinando say to this?’

  ‘He pays, he sends his wages, it is enough.’
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  Mrs Browning was quiet for the rest of that day. Wilson saw she was being watched, closely studied, and dropped her eyes to concentrate on the jacket she was making for Pen. He came rushing across the garden while she sewed and she called out to him to come and try the sleeves. He could hardly stand still for the two minutes it took to slip them over his blouse and he shouted at her to be quick, that Ferdinando was waiting to take him rabbit-shooting. When he had darted off, his mother sighed and said, ‘He grows quicker than ever.’ Wilson could not stop herself saying, ‘But you see him grow. I try to see Oreste, or used to before I gave up the torture, but all I see is a baby, fat and dimpled …’ Mrs Browning moved restlessly, cleared her throat, said nothing in reply, but then what could be said? Yet a week or so later she surprised Wilson by returning to this topic again, beginning, ‘Wilson, you remember the Ogilvys?’

  ‘But of course, ma’am, how could I forget. And Jeannie, I remember Jeannie well and wrote to her for a while, but she was not much of a correspondent.’

  ‘They are at their home in Scotland, but Mrs Ogilvy writes that Gigia, their Italian maid whom they took back with them, is returning to Florence next month.’

  ‘Indeed, ma’am,’ said Wilson politely, not seeing this had anything to do with her.

  ‘I have written to Mrs Ogilvy and enquired of her if Gigia might, for a consideration, and everything being arranged for her, if she might accept a travelling companion.’

  Wilson looked up, bewildered. Mrs Browning’s voice was heavy with a significance she could not rightly interpret. ‘A young travelling companion. Do you take my meaning, dear?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  ‘Oreste. Gigia is prepared to escort Oreste and even to collect him from your sister’s and take him to Liverpool from where she sails for Leghorn by way of Marseilles. What do you say, Wilson?’