Lady's Maid

by Margaret Forster

  The effort of being diplomatic left her depressed once more and miserable. It struck her how much of her life had been spent dissembling. To her mistress it was understandable that she should never speak absolutely freely but it was intolerable that she could not do so to the last remaining member of her family, nor even to her husband. Twice Ferdinando had come down to spend the night with her and twice she had refused him without offering any adequate reason. He did not understand that she felt so shrivelled and drained, and all thought of sexual relations was abhorrent to her – she was not a fit partner, and shrank from his attentions with loathing. He went off bewildered and hurt and she knew it was quite likely he would seek solace elsewhere. Let him. She found she hardly cared and when Mr Browning, with some evidence of concern for her, said that he feared they must take Ferdinando to Rome almost as soon as they all returned to Florence in October, she simply nodded. ‘I expected it, sir,’ she said, ‘with Mrs Browning’s health as it is.’

  ‘Will you keep Mr Landor, Wilson?’

  ‘Certainly, sir. He is quite used to me now and even accords me some respect.’

  She knew everyone watched her carefully, not knowing how to interpret her steady dutifulness, not crediting that it would last. She had never been less communicative either in speech or in manner and it was remarked on by Mrs Browning with curiosity. ‘You have done well, Wilson,’ she said on the last day in Siena. Wilson inclined her head but did not comment though she took care not to appear sullen. ‘You have got over your distress and disappointment most admirably, dear.’ Again, Wilson merely nodded. ‘Will you manage the winter alone?’

  ‘Indeed, ma’am. As I have managed others.’

  ‘You grow quite professional as a landlady. I hear on all sides of the excellence of your establishment.’

  Wilson knew she was being patronised if not mocked outright, but no trace of expression crossed her face and it gave her satisfaction that she knew it did not.

  ‘Pilade is a fine child,’ Mrs Browning said next, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘He is not in the least like any of Henrietta’s children, but when I see him laugh and run he makes me think of them, being nearer the little one’s age than my Penini. Oh Wilson, what will become of them?’

  ‘They have a father, ma’am,’ Wilson said, gently enough but nevertheless detached from Mrs Browning’s distress, ‘and each other and will not come to want.’

  ‘But the greatest want of all is of a mother when one is a child – no other will do.’

  Stoically, Wilson finished the packing she had offered to help with. There was no point in calling Mrs Browning’s attention to the deeper implications of her statement – she would only take it ill. Her coughing had started again and soon tears mingled with wheezing and she was in a sorry state by the time her husband came back to say the carriage was ready. ‘Now Ba! What is this!’ he exclaimed. ‘How can you travel so distraught? We must wait until you compose yourself. What brought this on, Wilson?’

  ‘Thinking of Miss Henrietta’s children, sir, and them being soon perhaps in want of a true mother.’

  Mr Browning sighed and put his arms round his wife’s heaving shoulders and drew her to him. Presently, as Wilson watched, quite impassive, Mrs Browning stopped weeping and her breath came easier. In another hour she was ready to go, carried to the carriage by her husband. Watching him with his burden, Wilson reflected it was as though he cradled a shadow in his arms. His wife lay there so limp, so insubstantial, her black hair hanging down like the tail of a whipped animal and one white hand clutching his sleeve as though it were her only hold on life. Tremors of feeling flickered through Wilson as she took in the scene. All was not dead in her. Her love for her mistress refused to die completely however hard she rejected it. Turning to go back to her own house to oversee her own arrangements for departure, she realised how little good the summer had done Mrs Browning. There had been no transformation, as so often there had been, but instead a marked decline in her powers. Her husband spoke of a winter in Rome working miracles but why should it when a summer in Siena had failed? She shivered, even though it was hot, and fancied death and disaster lurked everywhere these days. Nothing and no one was safe, least of all Mrs Browning, and as she reflected on this a sense of futility overwhelmed her.

  It remained with her throughout the month the Brownings spent in Florence, before going to Rome, and nothing seemed to lift it. Bulletins of Miss Henrietta’s condition were regular reminders that death was indeed in the midst of life but did not help to make her value her own any more. Nothing Mr Landor could do could touch her any longer – she could endure rages, witness violence and not flicker an eyelid. Paradoxically, as though realising his power to upset her had gone, the old gentleman became more docile. She knew his ways and had adapted to them and this seemed to give him a satisfaction which quietened him. Mr Browning, before he left for the south, complimented her on her handling of his friend. ‘You are as skilful as you were with my wife, Wilson,’ he remarked. ‘You would soothe a wild animal in the end.’ She showed no pleasure in the compliment, discomfiting him. ‘Not,’ he went on hastily, ‘that I liken my wife to Mr Landor nor to a wild animal, but she had similar need of kindness and nursing expertise.’ Still Wilson neither smiled nor nodded, but stood with her hands clasped in front of her, as though waiting. ‘So, Wilson,’ Mr Browning said, shifting uncomfortably, ‘you have done well and I am grateful. I trust you find the arrangement satisfactory? That you are agreeable it should continue?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  And that was how they parted. This time, Wilson did not go out in the street to wave goodbye nor did she weep. Ferdinando spent the night before departure with her but he might as well not have done. She brought Pilade into their bed and refused to send him out and the night was passed in mutual recriminations. Ferdinando’s were the stronger. He said she had become like a stone and tempted him to treat her as one and hurl her away. He accused her of blaming him for his failure to return with Oreste when, if anyone was to blame other than her sister Ellen, it was she herself. Finally, he swore and said she was a bad wife and if another woman of greater warmth came his way, no one could accuse him of adultery in taking her. Wilson let him rant and clutched Pilade to her. Towards dawn, she said to his sleeping back that he loved his employers more than he loved her and if he had been half the man he thought himself, he would have left them rather than abandon her. As he snored, she told him Florence was full of jobs for the likes of him and by no means all were living-in. It was his choice, she said, to cleave to the Brownings and he was a hypocrite to say otherwise. She said it all, knowing perfectly well none of it was heard, and then she slept a little. When she woke, her husband had gone and outside she could hear horses in the street. The carriage would have left by now. She had not time to dress and make her way to the Casa Guidi. This realisation instead of distressing her made her feel relieved. There was no guilt in the way she snuggled down under the coverlet, only a welcome sense of freedom. She was free of Ferdinando, towards whom her feelings had not so much changed as vanished, and of Mrs Browning who still troubled her so.

  She had bid her old mistress farewell the day before. Looking at her, swathed in shawls though the room was too warm and the day itself not cold, Wilson had once more felt those twinges of alarm which she resented. There was such suffering in the huge dark eyes, such a tremble about the pinched mouth, that all her instincts were to rush forward and abase herself and beg to be allowed to offer comfort. But she had not done so. She had said she hoped Rome would prove beneficial and the journey not too arduous. She had spoken stiffly, knowing she did, and she had seen how this wounded. It was hard to stand her ground but she had done so, not wishing to be reclaimed by old emotions. Only towards Pen had she let her guard slip and that was because he himself claimed her as his own, rushing into his mother’s bedroom and hurling himself into Wilson’s arms. ‘Oh Lily, darling,’ he cried, ‘I wish you and Pilade could come to Rome. Won’t you come, my Li
ly?’ He was a great lad now, though still slight and not above average height for eleven years, but he had not changed towards her in the least and his adoration of Pilade was touching. She had no doubt of the genuine affection he had for her and knew she would be a fool not to acknowledge it. ‘I will miss you, Penini,’ she said to him, giving him a hug in return, ‘and I will kiss Pilade for you every day.’ They embraced one last time and then he was off, rushing to Ferdinando to help him carry down what he claimed were his ‘very most precious’ things. ‘He loves you dearly, Wilson,’ Mrs Browning murmured. ‘And shows it always,’ Wilson replied, ‘even though he is no longer a child.’ ‘Of course he is a child!’ came the quick response, so sharp that a coughing fit inevitably followed. ‘He is as far from being a man as he is from being a baby.’

  There the interview had ended, Wilson leaving with another wish for good health, a wish she could not believe would be granted. Lying in bed, Pilade still asleep in her arms, she remembered the journeys she had made with the Brownings and the pleasure the intimacy of the carriage had given her. Now, if she were seated in her old place, wedged between the window and Penini, with his mother opposite encircled in her husband’s arms, or, if the men rode alongside or travelled on the outside of the carriage, sitting with her mistress while Pen and Flush lay on the other seat – now she would feel stifled, trapped, longing to get out. What had brought this change about she hardly knew, but whatever the cause she did not regret the consequence. It was a miserable business pining for those who had gone and she thought back with something close to horror of the unhappiness she had endured while wishing herself elsewhere. Better to be in Florence, alone, independent, not subjected to sudden swings of mood than be with people whom she felt no longer valued her, whatever they said. She had her own life and in it no one bothered her. All Mr Landor and the other lodgers cared about was that their rooms should be kept clean and their food brought on time, and she was expert at both. They did not want to be bothered with her joys and despairs and she did not want to be bothered with theirs. Pilade was the only one to whom she showed her true self and at three years of age this was no burden to him.

  She no longer wrote to Ferdinando nor to anyone else except Ellen and these were dutiful enquiries after Oreste’s health with reports of her own and Pilade’s. The desire to draw Ellen into her own life, to involve her in her worries, had left her. Ellen wanted none of it so let her dictate her terms. Every day, she went to the Casa Guidi and collected any letters for the Brownings to redirect them to Rome but she no longer envied the recipients their voluminous correspondence. But even that, she could not help noticing, had diminished – so many people were dead. No more letters for many a year now from Miss Mitford, none from Miss Trepsack, none from Mrs Jameson, who had always been so kind to her. All dead. And now none from Miss Henrietta, whose untidy hand she knew so well. Instead, Miss Arabel wrote, in her neat, tidy script, and Mr Surtees Cook. Picking up his letters made her hesitate. She wanted very much to know what news there was, though she feared it would be bad. Before the Brownings left Florence she had enquired of Mr Browning how things stood and had been told very ill, but that this must be kept from his wife until she was in the warm south and better able to stand the inevitable end of it all. Do not fail, Mr Browning had said, to send on any letters from Somerset with all speed. So she sent them on immediately, longing to know what they contained and never finding out, but supposing that so long as they did keep coming the worst could not yet have happened. When, in the last days of November, a telegram arrived she knew what it must contain and trembled as she held it in her hand. It had been delivered as she paid her daily visit to the Casa Guidi or otherwise would have languished at the post office, returned as unclaimed. It struck her as peculiar that Mr Browning should not have given Mr Surtees Cook his Rome address for this telegram could not be relayed south in under another twenty-four hours and perhaps more. Taking it back to the post office herself and explaining the circumstances she met with every kind of difficulty about the redirection and was compelled to pay out of her own pocket to have it seen to. She did this willingly, but wondered at Mr Browning’s unusual lack of forethought.

  It had all, of course, been a mistake – instructions as to the Rome address had been given to George Barrett and not properly passed on. Mr Browning wrote to thank her for her diligence and in doing so confirmed what she had been certain of, that Miss Henrietta had died. He said his wife was struck down, was inconsolable ‘in the old way’. Going about her daily routine, Wilson was dry-eyed, as she knew Mrs Browning would be for a while yet. No one was spared. The rich, the good, the pretty, the blessed all shared the same fate as the poor, the bad, the ugly, the deprived. Nothing anyone did could make any difference in the end. She could see Miss Henrietta yet in her mind’s eye, so young and lovely, laughing up into the face of her adoring Captain Cook. Such gaiety she had had, such an enthusiasm for life. And now this cruel end, just when she was happiest. Wilson could not bear to imagine the horror of such a death. Minnie had written to her about how terrible it had been, how Captain Cook had brought his wife up to see a specialist who had examined her and said at once there was nothing to be done, there was no operation possible, and he must take his wife home to die. Wilson thought of that home in Somerset and thought of Henrietta walking in the lovely garden, doubled up, so Minnie wrote, with pain. Everything had been tried but to no avail – the suffering had been agony, not even deadened with morphine. Wilson’s own insides contracted at the thought and she raged against the injustice of such a thing. She could not remember the age of the youngest child – was he one, or two, or even three by now? But the eldest was younger than Pen and the girl no more than five she was sure. What kind of leave-taking had that been, such a mother dying and leaving three young children? And Surtees Cook himself, as loving as ever Mr Browning was to her mistress. It was monstrous, dreadful. Resentment gathered in her in a hard knot but still the tears would not come.

  Her own life had to go on. She cooked, she cleaned, she shopped, she walked Pilade, she saw to her lodgers – day after day she did the same things at the same time, and instead of being driven half mad with boredom, insane with frustration, she found herself strangely at peace. And her savings mounted steadily. She spent little and even caring for her lodgers generously she did not need half the income she found she earned. It would, she saw, be perfectly possible for her and Pilade to go to England the following year if someone could be found to run her boarding house for the time it would take. But this realisation, which only the year before had excited her, merely pleased her. She made no more plans. When the time was ripe, if it was ever ripe, she would go and if not she would stay. She had given up all idea of exercising any power over fate. It was not just her station in life which precluded choice but life itself and she felt foolish not to have realised this long ago.

  Mr Landor, for all his selfishness, for all the fact that he was old and self-absorbed, felt the change in her. He scowled at her, as ever, but looked at her longer from under his shaggy white brows and one day soon after Christmas was moved again to comment how unlike his wife she was, the highest of compliments. She knew better than to reply. But in tucking a cover over the old man’s knees, for there was snow on the ground outside and in spite of a roaring fire the room was not as warm as he was used to, she felt her hand patted and then he said, ‘Peace and goodwill, peace and goodwill, that is the secret after all.’ He gave a great sigh and if she had not known him better she might have thought, as he slumped forward, that he had expired on the spot. But it was only one of those sleeps into which he was ever more likely to fall during the day and she knew he would waken, roaring, in an hour or so. She banked up the fire and took a look round the room before she closed the door. There were so many possessions in it, brought from his old home in Fiesole by Mr Browning to make the old gentleman feel as familiar as possible, that it was difficult to move about. Every piece of furniture, every object had associations according
to Mr Browning. Some of them were valuable. There were ornaments worth many guineas and pictures, however weird they seemed to her, which she had been told were of great artistic merit. Occasionally, Mr Landor would accuse her of stealing from him when he had mislaid a silver spoon or could not find a precious paperknife, but she had always treated these accusations with the contempt they deserved. She had none of the fears of the normal servant that her honesty might ever be in doubt and her absolute conviction of her own integrity had finally communicated itself to the old man and been conceded by him.

  She wrote a short monthly letter to Rome, merely reporting on Mr Landor’s condition and saying all was well in the Casa Guidi. In reply she always received an acknowledgement but rarely more unless Penini wrote. To her surprise, he wrote to her more that winter than at any time before and she was touched to find him attempting more than the sweet but stilted compositions he had managed previously. They were so free in expression she wondered if they had been read at all by his parents but presumed they could hardly have escaped their eye. She heard that:

  — Papa is grown stout and has need of bigger trousers but Mama cries he is more handsome than ever and so do I. I have little time my Lily to write because I am put to Latin with the Abbe which is sore hard work and gives me the headache. I would that you were with us to hear me play the piano which I do every day and Papa declares I make good progress. I have begun to Fence which is a man’s game and I am to have my uncle Sette’s foil when next we go to England which may be in the summer. I hope you will come with us Lily and Pilade too and we will have fun.

  There was as much chance of that as flying to the moon but Wilson was grateful for Pen’s long memory. He never forgot how it had once been, never seemed to regard her in any other way but as the person who had cared for him and loved him without reservation. Every time she saw him again after an absence she stood aside humbly, expecting him at last to have reached the age when she was an embarrassment, expecting him to shuffle his feet and colour and do no more than extend a cool hand, and she would have held none of this against him. But so far this had never happened – always, it was straight into her arms, no matter who was present, and all the hugs and kisses in the world most fervently given.