Never Look Back

by Lesley Pearse

  If Lily had met Giles at her parents’ home she doubted he would have found anything to like about her, much less love. There she was a scorned mouse with no conversation or opinion. But no one belittled her at Uncle Thomas’s, they praised her gentle nature, applauded her knowledge of books and loved her for her happy delight in their children. After several months of visits, when Giles sheepishly told her he was falling in love with her, she told him he had only seen the best of her there and perhaps he ought to see her in her own home before making such statements. He laughed and said he was seeing her as she really was, and he didn’t think he would like her parents very much anyway.

  It was the happiest day of her life when Giles asked her to marry him. He pointed out that he had little to offer her, that even when he was given his own church they would never have the luxury she’d been brought up with, all he could give her was his love. That was all Lily wanted.

  Shortly after their wedding, which her father arranged with almost indecent haste, Giles was sent to London, to St Mark’s in Primrose Hill, to be curate to the frail Reverend Hooper, a widower of seventy. On the Reverend Hooper’s death a year later, Giles took over as parson and they had the small parsonage to themselves.

  Lily found being a parson’s wife empowered her. Visiting the sick in the parish, organizing Sunday school for children, and persuading the more wealthy parishioners to donate money for charitable causes, weren’t tasks to her, but a fulfilling joy. To be her own mistress at last, admired for the very qualities her family had scorned, and to have a passionate and adoring husband was like being reborn. She loved Primrose Hill – in many ways it was like Bristol and Bath with its fine Regency houses – yet here she had position and even some authority. Walking up on to the hill and seeing the panoramic views of London across Regent’s Park was an unfailing delight. Giles often reminded her sharply that just outside their parish there were terrible areas where two and even three families lived in one room, where life expectancy was seldom beyond thirty-five, and over half the babies died in infancy, but because Lily hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, it didn’t trouble her.

  Tabitha’s birth was Lily’s moment of triumph. At thirty-one, after four years of waiting and hoping, she had resigned herself to never becoming a mother. But fear was her joy’s uninvited companion. Suddenly Giles’s tales of infant deaths, of cholera, smallpox and all those other monstrous diseases took on terrifying proportions. Although she needed help, she refused to have any other servant than Aggie, the housekeeper they had inherited from the Reverend Hooper, for fear they might bring pestilence into her home.

  But now, as Lily looked across the cab at Matilda struggling to compose herself, all at once she realized that today’s near tragedy was a warning to her. There had been many times in the past year when she’d become fraught with trying to cope with a lively toddler alone. Today she’d only been distracted for a moment, yet that was all it took for Tabitha to get out of the shop and into danger. How ironic it was too that although Oxford Street was full of women much like herself, her child should be rescued by one of the class she feared.

  Deeply ashamed of herself, Lily reached across the cab and patted Matilda’s arm. ‘Shock makes us all cry,’ she said gently. ‘But you’ll feel better when you’ve had some food and I’ve got that wound cleaned up for you.’

  Matilda had been to Primrose Hill selling her flowers many times in the past, but it looked and felt quite different alighting from a cab. The big houses with their marble steps and gleaming brass on their front doors had always seemed threatening before, now they looked welcoming.

  Sometimes in her braver moments she had slunk down basement steps to try to sell her wares to the cook or housekeeper, and most times she was shouted at and told never to come back again. But now she was actually being asked in, not through a servants’ entrance either, but through the front door.

  It didn’t matter that it was the smallest house in the square, just a plain two-storey one tacked on to the churchyard. It was a real house, the first she’d ever been in.

  The front door was opened by an elderly, fat woman with bristles on her chin, wearing a snowy-white apron and ruffled cap, but her bright smile faded as she saw Matilda with her employers.

  ‘This is Matilda Jennings, Aggie,’ Giles said, ushering her in before him. ‘She saved Tabitha’s life this morning and got hurt, so we’ve brought her home. I know what a good nurse you can be, so perhaps you’ll take a look at her injuries and give her a meal.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ the woman replied, although her stiff expression remained. ‘But the dinner’s been waiting this last half-hour, it’s ready to serve.’

  Lily brushed past the older woman with Tabitha in her arms. ‘I can serve the dinner,’ she said in an impervious tone. ‘You see to the girl.’

  Perhaps it was as well Matilda was struck dumb by the kitchen she was led into, for Aggie’s disapproving scowl might well have made her utter some cheek.

  It was large and bright, full of sunshine, the cleanest room she’d ever seen. A large scrubbed table stood in the centre, and instead of just an open fire to cook on, it was inside a contraption fitted with doors. Matilda had seen advertisements for such things and knew it was called a ‘stove’ but she’d never seen one before. A dresser was full of dainty china, shelves trimmed with red and white checked scallops, even the cooking pots looked nice hanging from hooks.

  ‘So what happened to Miss Tabitha?’ Aggie almost spat at her, the minute she’d closed the door behind them. ‘And I don’t want no lies either. The Reverend might be easy to fool. But I’m not.’

  Matilda wasn’t surprised by this response, cooks and housekeepers were notorious for shielding their employers. In as few words as possible she explained what had occurred.

  Aggie slumped down on to a chair and looked astonished. ‘You jumped in front of a galloping horse?’

  It wasn’t so much a gallop as a canter, but there were four of them, so Matilda nodded.

  Aggie’s face softened and she touched her eyes with the bottom of her apron, all hostility gone. ‘Well I never,’ she exclaimed. ‘You were a brave girl. No wonder Madam brought you home. I’d better look at your wounds.’

  The smell of meat and gravy wafting around the kitchen was so tantalizing Matilda was tempted to ask for food first, but she wasn’t brave enough. She turned round so the older woman could view her back.

  Aggie tutted but touched the wound gently. ‘Your dress is all stuck to it, and it’s none too clean either. I think you could be doin’ with a bath, miss.’

  Some time later when Matilda was at last allowed to sit at the table with a plate of stewed lamb and vegetables in front of her, she wondered for a moment if she was dreaming all this. Was she really eating this huge dinner? Had she really had a real bath? Was the clean grey dress she was now wearing really for her?

  It was a house of miracles, that much she was sure of. Aggie had taken a fruit pie out of the stove, all perfect and golden just like the ones in the bakeries. Out in the scullery next to a sink there was a big tub thing with a fire beneath it which Aggie called the boiler, she’d turned a tap and drawn out hot water into a pail to fill a tin bath. Matilda was shocked to find she was expected to take off all her clothes and climb into it. A bath to her was just a wash-down all over, when her brothers and father were out, and she washed her hair under the pump outside.

  Aggie had overseen the whole thing, including washing her hair for her. She’d tutted over the wound on her shoulder and said she hoped it wouldn’t leave a scar. Matilda wondered why anyone would worry about a scar on her back, it wasn’t as if she’d ever go around in a low-cut dress like ladies did.

  But as if washing with proper soap wasn’t enough, after she’d dried herself, and had ointment put on her back, Aggie came back into the scullery bringing a whole armful of Lily’s old clothes for her, not just a dress but a cotton shift, two flannel petticoats, a pair of stockings and boots. There was even a pair of drawers
, something Matilda hadn’t ever worn before. The boots were just a bit big, but that didn’t matter, they were comfortable, with no holes in them.

  She felt like a lady. Clean, sweet-smelling and lovely.

  Aggie glanced over her shoulder at the young girl eating her dinner and winced as she saw the way she used only the knife and pushed the food on to it with her fingers. But she had cleaned up well, her hair was as shiny as buttercups now it was washed, hanging loose over her shoulders. A pretty little thing with her sweet smile and her lack of cheek. Aggie hadn’t even seen any lice on her, and she’d looked hard enough.

  Aggie had been housekeeper at the parsonage for eighteen years. The Reverend Hooper had taken her on when she was widowed and left with four small children. In those days the children came with her to work, sitting out here in the kitchen or playing in the garden while she cleaned, washed and cooked for the old man. When the Milsons arrived nearly seven years ago, she had resented them bitterly. She had been used to doing everything her own way, in fact she’d come to treat the parsonage as if it were her own home. But Lily Milson changed all that. Suddenly it was ‘Spring-clean that room,’ ‘This needs a good polish,’ And ‘That isn’t the way I like this or that cooked.’ She was forever in the kitchen, poking her nose into every last thing. Yet Aggie came round to her when she saw the tender way the woman cared for old Reverend Hooper when he became sick.

  Aggie admitted now that Lily had turned out to be an almost perfect parson’s wife. She fully supported her husband’s work in the parish, showing kindness and understanding to those in need. No one was better at smoothing ruffled feathers than she was. She had endless patience with the difficult wealthy parishioners who believed the parson was their sole property, and worked tirelessly at making the parsonage more comfortable and inviting. Since she’d arrived she’d made new curtains, covers for old chairs, and introduced Aggie to new dishes to cook. Her only real fault was that she was so pernickety about trifles. Nothing must be wasted, not a crust of bread or left-over vegetables. If there was one small mark on her husband’s surplice it had to be boiled, starched and ironed again. Everything had to gleam, be it floors, furniture, glass or silver. To her dirt was the Devil.

  Yet something had changed in her since Tabitha was born. While ecstatically happy with her long-awaited child, she seemed so troubled and fearful too. She could change like the weather, one day kind and thoughtful to everyone, the next a shrew. One minute she was complimenting Aggie on her cooking, the next everything was wrong. But the worst was her ridiculous fears about disease – she seemed to think the little one was so fragile that even a common housefly might kill her!

  When Aggie thought what her children had to contend with in their early days, hunger, cold, rats climbing over them while they slept, left alone for hours while she tried to find work to keep them from the poor-house! Yet they’d grown up healthy, all off her hands now, one in the navy, one in Australia, and the two girls married off with homes of their own. In her view Tabitha was overprotected, fussed over from morning till night, and that was far more unhealthy than a bit of dirt.

  ‘Reverend and Mrs Milson want to see you when you’ve finished,’ Aggie said as she passed the girl a slice of gooseberry pie. She wanted to say she was sorry for being so frosty at first, she of all people had no right to be like that with someone poor. But Aggie wasn’t one for retracting anything. Besides, she was never going to see the girl again and she had her position to think of. ‘So mind your manners, and don’t go calling her “missus”, it’s madam and sir!’

  Matilda wasn’t sure of the exact meaning of ‘manners’. Was it just saying please and thank you? Or was there more to it? As she made her way up the narrow hallway to the parlour at the front of the house where Aggie said she was to knock, then wait to be called in, she wondered if she was supposed to curtsey, or was that only to proper gentry?

  She thought this house was splendid. There was a lovely lavender smell and everything was shiny, from the banisters to the floor beneath her feet. She didn’t much care for the pictures, though, they were all dark and gloomy, especially a long narrow one of a lot of men sitting along a table, all looking at a man in the middle with sort of sunrays round his head. If she ever got rich enough to live in a house like this, she’d have bright paintings of happy scenes.

  ‘Come in!’ Giles Milson called out in answer to her tentative knock.

  The first thing that struck Matilda about the sitting-room was how hot it was, the fire blazing as though it was mid-winter. The walls too were a deep dark red which made it seem even hotter, and there was so much furniture she could barely see more than a foot or two of floor.

  The parson was sitting in a high-backed chair on one side of the fire, his wife on the other in a lower one. Matilda supposed Tabitha had been taken upstairs for a rest.

  The couple both stared at her for a moment before speaking, then Lily excused herself. ‘I beg your pardon, Matilda, it’s just that you look so different with your hair loose. What a pretty colour it is!’

  Matilda could only blush and drop her eyes to the floor. All she wanted now was to retrieve her basket and get home. She hoped they weren’t going to lecture her about going to church before they let her go.

  Giles was so taken aback by the girl’s new appearance he found himself tongue-tied. The face of the girl he’d brought round with smelling-salts hadn’t really registered in his mind, only that he was indebted to her. Even during the cab ride home all he’d really observed about her was her speedwell-blue eyes, and her dirt-engrained hands. Yet this girl in front of him had more in common with one of his parishioners’ daughters than a waif from the slums. Her skin was pink and white, her pretty yellow hair shone like ripe corn, and she wore his wife’s old dress with more style than Lily ever gave it.

  ‘How is your back, Matilda?’ he managed to get out.

  ‘Just dandy, sir,’ she replied, she hadn’t the heart to continue the pretence of being badly hurt. ‘These clothes you give me is lovely and the dinner was nice too.’

  Giles was struck by her appreciative candour and the way she looked him right in the eye as she replied. An idea which had seeded in his mind over dinner suddenly seemed much less preposterous.

  ‘Do sit down,’ he said, beckoning to a chair between his wife and himself. ‘Mrs Milson and myself would like to know a little more about you. Perhaps you could start by telling us where you live, and about your family?’

  Matilda groaned inwardly, convinced that this was his way of leading up to the expected lecture on God. But as she was wearing clothes they’d given her and she had a full belly, that seemed a small price to pay for telling them anything they wanted to know.

  She launched into a brief family history, including the death of Peggie which she admitted was through her drunkenness, hastily pointing out her father wasn’t a drinking man and how he wished he could afford to find herself and her brothers a better home.

  Lily asked how long she had been selling flowers, and seemed shocked to hear she’d started it at ten.

  ‘Ten ain’t so young,’ Matilda said earnestly. ‘I see’s girls every day as young as five or six. But I went to school, see. Father wanted me to read and write so I’d ’ave a better chance like.’

  There was a little gasp at this and Lily’s eyes opened wide in surprise. ‘You can read and write?’ she said.

  ‘And do sums,’ Matilda said with some pride. ‘But I like reading best, when I can get ’old of a book.’

  She wondered what she had said wrong when the couple exchanged glances.

  ‘I loves flowers too,’ she added defensively. ‘It’s bloomin’ ’ard getting up at four to get to the market in the middle of winter, but I tells meself at least it’s clean work, not like working down at the tips, sifting rubbish all day.’

  Madam raised her eyebrows. ‘Sifting rubbish?’ she repeated. ‘Why would anyone do that?’

  Matilda wanted to smile. She had forgotten that people like the
se knew nothing of the darker side of London. ‘They sift through it for stuff to sell,’ she explained. ‘Bones, metal, sometimes they even get lucky and find valuables someone has thrown out by mistake. Then the dust left behind goes to make bricks.’

  ‘How intriguing,’ Lily replied, but she held a handkerchief to her nose almost as if to ward off the imagined smell in such a place. ‘I had no idea.’

  Giles cleared his throat. ‘What sort of work would you really like, Matilda? I mean if you could choose?’ he asked, giving her a penetrating look.

  Matilda had often heard stories about young girls being lured away from their homes and families with a promise of a better job, never to be seen again. It was said these girls were sold abroad as white slaves. It crossed her mind she should be very careful in case that’s what these two had in mind. It was a bit strange they’d brought her to their house and wanted to know so much.

  ‘To be the Queen would be dandy,’ she joked to hide her sudden nervousness.

  Giles smiled. He found this girl puzzling, by rights she ought to be either cowed or wily enough to be demanding something of them. Yet apart from a slight wariness in her eyes as she answered their questions, she seemed innocently comfortable.

  ‘I’d be ’appy to work in a shop or be a maid,’ Matilda added quickly. ‘But I don’t s’pose anyone would take me on. I don’t look or sound right, do I?’

  There was no reply to this. Giles just looked at his wife and raised his eyebrows. She thought that was confirmation they agreed with her.

  In point of fact, before Matilda had been summoned, the Milsons had been discussing how they should reward this girl. Lily had felt a shilling, a few groceries and the clothes they’d already given her were sufficient. Giles had pointed out that would be no lasting good, and suggested asking one of their wealthier parishioners to take her on as a scullery maid, or perhaps get her a position in the big laundry in Camden Town. But now, faced with her clean and neat appearance, the intelligence in her face, the lack of evasion to their questions, and discovering she could read and write, it seemed to Giles that she was heaven-sent as a nursemaid for Tabitha.