Lady's Maid

by Margaret Forster

  She wrote back to him careful little letters to which no one could object, fearing to display too much emotion in case it called attention to the boy’s over-regard for her but she managed all the same to make her affection felt, telling him:

  — Pilade looks for you everywhere and will not believe I have not hidden you in a box. He has no one to play ball with and tosses his ball against the wall in a most despondent fashion. He thanks you for the toy soldiers you left behind for him but wishes The General was here to organise them in fighting order. You are very kind to have thought of him and when I gave him your kiss he gave me a hundred in return to pass on to you believing I could and indeed I wish he was correct in his supposition.

  That was as far as she felt she could go, though it was harmless enough. She had seen the children in other families break away entirely from the too zealous claims of an old nurse and when the time came, as it surely must, she wished to protect herself from the pain which rejection could cause. Of all the nurses she had known only Minnie Robinson had remained loved and revered and even now, when she was old and pensioned off, Miss Arabel visited her faithfully and turned to her in complete trust for advice and comfort. She could not be to Pen as Minnie was to Miss Arabel since there was a mother in between but she had a great desire to see her former charge treat her as freely when he reached manhood. Of course, being a boy made it the more difficult, it would not be as easy, but it had begun to seem to her not impossible to keep in touch with Pen wherever he was.

  As for England, she heard enough to doubt that there would ever be another trip there for the Brownings, or at least for Mrs Browning. Ferdinando surprised her by having someone write a letter for him towards the end of March which made it plain that Mrs Browning had fared no better in Rome than in Siena and was very ill. He wrote not to tell her this nor to send her any kind of greeting but because he wanted her to do something for him. It seemed he had left in the Casa Guidi a gun of which he was fond, taking only his hunting rifle in case he had the chance to go into the country to shoot rabbits. Now his hunting rifle had lost a piece from its firing mechanism and he had been unable to replace it. He requested her to parcel up most carefully in an oiled cloth his other gun and have it sent to him. She was at first incensed at the idea – as if she had no more to do than pack up guns, as if it were an easy matter to send such an object at all, as if she existed only for his convenience – and then amused. Rabbits, indeed. She was not fooled for an instant nor so cut off from news that she had not heard that war was in the air again. Ferdinando was far too old, but only mention the cause and he would be into his old daydreams, seeing himself at the head of a column moving relentlessly on the Austrians. She wrote to him quite sharply, not caring who read her letter, that:

  — it is impossible for me to post a gun as you ought to know you foolish man for what would the post office officials think were I to turn up with a gun to send? And do not think such an object can be disguised for that is manifest nonsense as you have only to try to discover. But Miss Blagden, whom I met by chance yesterday, is going to Rome and when I told her the absurdity of your request she volunteered to carry your ridiculous weapon saying she had always had a fancy to be a gun-runner and that it would be a tale to tell her friends and astonish them. So you will have Miss Blagden to thank and now I suppose that since I am useless to you I will not hear from you again which will not grieve me if that is all I am good for.

  That was spiteful and unnecessary but she did not score it out. Not a word had she received from Pilade’s father as to his son’s welfare all this long time and if she had given him cause, as he might argue, to abandon her she had given him no such leave to forget his child. No reply came. Miss Blagden duly took the wretched gun and it was she who was kind enough to write on delivering it:

  — I found your husband very well, Wilson, and as expected by you much agitated over the rumours that another concerted effort is to be made to free and unite his country which subject I may say engages the minds and hearts of his employers hardly less. Mrs Browning, who looks weak and I believe has hardly moved from her room all winter, though she has ventured on a carriage trip or two since spring arrived, is excited by the promise Cavour has made to bring some statesmanship into this affair and hopes much from him. Your heart would go out to her, Wilson, if you were to see how she struggles to be her old self but is exhausted after a mere ten minutes of conversation, and then she is obliged to fall back and take no more part in it though wishing to do so. I dare not ask directly what is the precise matter but I see in Mr Browning’s eyes an anxiety deeper than usual and he confessed to me the other day that he fears there may be water on the lung. She will not hear of it and tells him the summer will restore her to her full strength, a story you have heard before and will not believe any more than I do. She asked after you and was pleased when I told her how well your business was doing and that you seemed in good spirits since she said she had been anxious for you.

  Wilson read that several times – ‘anxious for you’. Why? When? And if so, some manifestation of this concern would have been welcome. Anxious, more likely, that she would become a nuisance again, would let Mr Landor down or cause trouble over Ferdinando being taken away. All that Mrs Browning required of her, surely, was that she should be docile and self-contained and grateful.

  But then, as Miss Blagden said, she was ill and depressed after her sister’s death. Has all charity, all true compassion, left me, Wilson wondered? She seemed to feel so much less, neither joy nor sorrow moving her extravagantly. The child of one of her lodgers died in her house in April of an undiagnosed heart complaint – the tiny thing’s heart simply stopped as it lay in its cot – and though she was sorry for it and sympathetic to the last degree she was aware that inside herself she shrugged and felt none of the horror and distress such an event would once have caused her. Nor could she decide whether this was a blessing or not. It was a relief not to weep and toss sleepless at night after such tragedies but her own indifference shocked and troubled her. Had she become hard? Had life buffeted her so that now she was impervious to all storms? But then, if that were so, why did it not make her happy? She felt, in her new severity (for want of a better word) only half alive, she knew she wanted the old enthusiasms and passions and expectations to course through her and arouse her. To be so accepting of whatever came her way was to be comfortable but also to be dead.

  It often occurred to her that she might never leave Florence again even when she had the money and means to do so. She could not decide if this was something she cared about or not. Once, she had thought of herself as so English that however happy she was abroad and even if married to an Italian she would always one day gravitate home. Now, she was not sure. She could no longer identify her own Englishness – it was lost under the thick veneer of assumed Italian ways and manners. Mrs Browning had teased her only that summer for becoming more Italian than English and there was some truth in it. Italy had made her lazy, and it was this indolence in herself, in her mind as well as her body, which astonished her. She could sit for hours in the sun these days, content to watch Pilade play, doing nothing whatsoever. She could put all but the most essential tasks off until the next day, or the next, and did it all the time. Little by little everything that was most English about her had been eroded and all she had left of it was her honesty, her natural courtesy and a slight reserve she could not entirely eliminate. She found it unsurprising that her lodgers, with the exception of Mr Landor, assumed she was Italian, especially if their own command of the Italian language was weak.

  When she heard them talking of home in her house it was as though it were a foreign country. Who were these actors and actresses of whom they spoke? What had happened to Macready and Mrs Kemble? What were these Acts of Parliament they spoke of, to do with factories and labour? And this Women’s Movement, which so many of the ladies whispered about, what did it mean? At least the Queen was still on the throne and nothing changed there, even though she was l
ong a widow. She heard, too, that wages had begun to climb and that a lady’s maid, such as she had been, commanded what seemed an astronomical salary – thirty guineas a year in London in some houses, twice what she had ever earned. But prices were higher too. Several guests had difficulty hiding the fact that they found her charges cheap (though they were not cheap by Italian standards). One gentleman even said to her that, were she to run such a boarding house in England and charge what she charged in Florence, she would be besieged. So she knew that in the few years since she had last been in England great changes had begun to take place from some of which she might clearly benefit. She was the one who was standing still, frozen in every way into herself.

  The arrival of the Brownings and her husband in Florence at the beginning of June was the beginning of what she felt to be a softening of her self and she was glad to find the hard crust she felt encasing her crack and dissolve. It was the shock of seeing Mrs Browning to whom she went, a little reluctantly, on June 6th, a little after midday. Nothing Isa Blagden had said had prepared her for the fright. She was used to her old mistress’s pallor, to the skeleton thinness, to the heavy, bruised-looking eyes but walking into her bedroom on the beautiful summer’s morning and looking towards the bed she was stopped in her progress and forced to control the exclamation of horror that rose to her lips. Here was a face, buried in its cloud of hair, which looked more like a mask than a living thing, a mask such as might be worn on All Souls’ Eve to scare the children, all thickly white with painted black sockets for eyes and a mouth so crudely gashed it was but a slit. It was dreadful to see and all the more frightening for the misery of the expression which no attempt at smiling could lift. ‘Oh, ma’am!’ Wilson said, and covered her mouth with her hand to try to hide her distress. ‘That is a fine welcome,’ Mrs Browning murmured. ‘I am a little drowsy, that is all, a little tired with the journey, though I feel better than I thought I would. How are you, Wilson? And Pilade? And Mr Landor?’

  ‘All well, ma’am.’

  ‘And have you had a quiet winter?’

  ‘Not so quiet. We had guests over Christmas, the house full, and three stayed until Easter which – oh, ma’am!’ She came to a full stop, quite overcome, quite unable to continue such a pedestrian account. Her heart beat in a way she had not been conscious of it beating for many a month and she felt near to tears. Timidly, she went close to the bed and when the invalid stretched out her hand she took it gratefully and sat beside her. The hand was hot, the skin dry and the slender fingers lay in her palm like splinters of fine porcelain – she was afraid to squeeze them for fear they might snap. But now Mrs Browning was cheerful, talking at once, though with long pauses for breath, of politics and how much she hoped from Cavour. ‘I learned much from Ferdinando’s friends in Rome,’ she said. ‘Oh, we had a regular revolutionary den, Wilson, I assure you, our house was a hotbed of intrigue and your husband in the thick of it.’

  ‘I am sure. It is all he thinks of.’

  ‘It is very nearly all I think of, the hope in it, the glory to come … if I live to see it.’

  ‘Live? Of course you will live, why when the summer …’

  ‘Wilson, I saw your look just now, dear. There is no use in telling me I shall soon be running up mountains. I know what I am become and so do you.’

  ‘I had not seen you for over six months, ma’am, it was merely surprise that you have lost a little colour …’

  Mrs Browning began to laugh but the laugh brought on a coughing fit and, when Wilson rushed to her aid and raised her higher on the pillow, her face took on an ugly blue tinge, which she had never seen before. Mr Browning coming in at that very moment ran to his wife’s side and all but hauled her out of the bed in order to get her upright – in a moment, the convulsion was over and she sank back quite exhausted and drained. Down from one corner of her mouth Wilson was alarmed to see a thin trickle of dark red blood. She looked at Mr Browning, startled, and he drew a clean handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the blood away tenderly, saying, ‘She tells me it is nothing, nothing she has not had before.’

  ‘Never dark blood, sir,’ Wilson murmured, very low.

  ‘It is gone now. It is never much.’

  They both stood looking down at the poor sufferer, neither speaking. Gradually, her expression relaxed and soon they saw she was genuinely asleep. Together, they left the room.

  Mr Browning, she saw, was as robust as his wife was pitifully weak. He strode about the drawing room restlessly, occasionally hitting the back of a chair with his hand, and she saw how pent-up were his energies. Finally, he came to a stop in front of the fireplace and turning to face her said, almost accusingly, ‘You know her, Wilson. What am I to do?’

  ‘Well, sir, I fear there is nothing you can do except what is done already, which is to keep Mrs Browning calm and quiet and endeavour to feed her nourishing food to give her back some strength.’

  ‘That is the precise problem it has always been. How can I feed her nourishing food when she will eat nothing? I have sat with her for hours spooning broth into her and a tedious business it is to make sure any of it goes down. You know, Wilson, you know, you cannot have forgotten how it is.’

  ‘Certainly I cannot. But I remember too that it was always unwise to fuss too much over what was taken for then she becomes anxious herself and her throat seizes up and nothing can go down … oh, sir, she seems very ill.’

  ‘It is nothing to how it has been. I feared in Rome I detected a great change for the worse, but she has stood the journey well, better than might have been expected, and now, if all remains serene, we may see her build up again.’

  But everything did not remain serene. Unaware of the news which had spread swiftly throughout the city, Wilson returned to the Casa Guidi late in the evening, not really thinking to see Mrs Browning again but wishing to enquire after her and to take a knead cake she had made specially. It would not be eaten – she had not the faintest illusion of that – but it would be looked on and smiled over and would bring back happy memories and it was all she could think of to signify her reborn affection. So she hurried through the streets, hot and dusty, the still warm knead cake covered with a cloth, and she was aware of a certain agitation in the people passing her, without catching anything said. Concentrating on keeping her gift level and unsquashed she climbed the Casa Guidi stairs carefully, glad when she reached the last bend. But as she did so, she thought she heard a thin, piercing sound, like the wail of a child who has just wakened up and found himself alone. She stopped, listening. It could not be Pen, whose voice these days in all its guises was strong and most unchildlike. Nor could it be a cat, for there had never been a cat in the Casa Guidi. It came again, a most piteous keening sound and she hurried on, her thoughts turning to the highly-strung Annunciata who might be mourning yet another lost Roman lover. The door was propped open, to catch what air there was, and she entered hesitantly, her gift thrust out in front of her. There was no sign of either Ferdinando or Annunciata in the kitchen so she was bold enough to tip-toe towards the drawing room where she hesitated again and peered round the door. The room was empty, but she could hear Mr Browning’s voice from the bedroom and was now certain that was where the cry was coming from. It could only be from Mrs Browning. Fearing a tragedy of epic proportions – her mind leapt at once to Penini and then to Miss Arabel – she knocked on the open door and Mr Browning came through from the other room, so haggard and drawn in contrast to his morning self that once more she was convinced something dreadful had happened.

  To her, it was nothing dreadful after all, but she was compelled to keep silent and pay lip-service at least to the general despair, for fear she would be outlawed otherwise. Cavour was dead, that was all. Cavour, only fifty years of age, the great statesman Italy had needed for so long. This was the death that had reduced Mrs Browning to a grief more overt and terrible than she had ever shown before and all around her there were faces nearly as stricken and voices almost as crazed. There was nothing Wil
son could say or do. It did not make sense to her. Miss Henrietta’s death had seemed so much more terrible and yet when she ventured to say this she was met with blank looks. Putting her knead cake down in the kitchen, she went back to her own home through the streets where already black crepe banners were being hung from every window. God knew what effect this would have on Mrs Browning, but as she went to bed that night she had no feelings of optimism left and already there yawned ahead a great void.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  IN THE DAYS that followed Cavour’s death Wilson came near to wishing he had never lived in the first place. All she heard, in the street, in the market, and most of all in the Casa Guidi was the name Cavour until she was sick of it. Such a fuss, such a song and dance, making her feel that those worries she had entertained of having nothing English left in her were after all misplaced – she suddenly felt very English indeed in her disdain for the extravagance of this public mourning. Ferdinando was distraught, weeping openly and going so near to tearing his hair in fact as well as metaphorically that she could hardly credit it. ‘And you a grown man!’ she exclaimed scornfully. He tried to explain to her the dreadful significance of this great man’s untimely death but she had no interest in the explanation. Of far more concern to her was Mrs Browning’s condition.

  She visited her every day, drawn irrestistibly to the sick woman’s bedroom and finding some comfort in seeming to be welcomed. Annunciata was not good with an invalid, being still too young and energetic to take kindly to tiptoeing and ministering calmly to someone suffering. Watching her, Wilson saw at once that as well as a certain ineptitude the girl had a dislike of illness itself. Every time she had to deal with a handkerchief soaked in phlegm she could hardly contain her disgust and in a patient as sensitive to every nuance of voice and expression as Mrs Browning such revulsion was hurtful. Then the girl, though doubtless with the best intention in the world, was so determined to be cheerful it jarred on the nerves. She would come in singing and beaming, sure this was the way to make her mistress feel better and having no conception of how offensive this heartiness was. There was nothing Mrs Browning liked better than someone young and vivacious about her when she was well but when she was ill it was anathema to her. So she was glad to see Wilson, so quiet and calm, and Annunciata was equally pleased. When it was suggested she might take the afternoons off, with Wilson offering to be there each day from two to four, she accepted the idea gratefully, and everyone was satisfied.