Never Look Back

by Lesley Pearse

  She wished she hadn’t blurted it out like that when her father’s ruddy colour suddenly drained away. ‘America!’ he exclaimed. ‘Oh no, Matty!’

  Because of the boys’ disappearance last August, she hadn’t told him anything about her employer’s intention of going to New York, besides, it wasn’t mentioned again after that night, not in her hearing anyway, so she’d begun to think Giles had abandoned the idea.

  ‘Take this tea, afore you go on,’ Dolly said, pushing a mug into her hands. ‘And don’t you look so sour-faced, Lucas. It’s a great chance for Matty. Now, just let me cut a slice of cake for you both and we’ll have the whole story if you please.’

  The cake was still warm, and rich with raisins and spices. Matilda thought it was the best she’d ever eaten, it put Aggie’s and her own efforts to shame.

  ‘It was only on Christmas Day they asked me to go with them,’ Matilda began. ‘They asked me into the parlour to give me my present, that lovely brown shawl. I nearly burst into tears at that, but then blowed if they didn’t make me sit down because they said they had another surprise for me.’

  She paused for a moment to get her breath back. ‘Well, then Sir just came out with it. Said they’d decided to go to America in April and would I like to go with them. Oh, Father!’ she exclaimed, reaching out to touch his knee. ‘Sir was so lovely. He said, “We think of you as one of our family now, Matty. None of us wants to go without you.” Well, I did cry then, and Madam, she gave me one of those soft looks she gives Tabby. She said she hoped it wouldn’t make you unhappy, but if I didn’t like it I could always come home again. Sir’s so excited, Father, he keeps saying what a big adventure it will be, and showing me maps and things about America.’

  She paused again, suddenly aware that her father looked stunned and so very sad. ‘I don’t like to leave you, Father,’ she went on, taking his hand and rubbing it between her two. ‘But if I don’t go, what are the choices for me? Another nursemaid’s job perhaps with a family that won’t be so good to me, or being a maid or a shop girl.’

  ‘She’s right,’ Dolly said stoutly, giving Lucas no time to chip in with his opinion. ‘A slave to someone who will never appreciate her! If I’d been offered such a chance when I was Matty’s age I’d have been off without thinking twice. We keep hearing that things is going to improve soon, but I’ve been hearing that all me life and so have you, Lucas. The truth of the matter is that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. America’s got to be a whole lot better.’

  Lucas looked at his daughter. Apart from her hands moving on his, she was sitting as stiff as a plank, her eyes pleading with him to agree she should go. He looked at Dolly who gave him an encouraging smile. ‘You go with my blessing if it’s what you really want,’ he said slowly and thoughtfully. ‘I told you once before, Matty, to never look back, and I meant it. If I can’t be ‘ollering with ‘appiness right now for you, well, it’s just that it will be ‘ard not to see you grow into a woman, see you get married to some fine fella and a brood of little ‘uns around yer skirts.’

  ‘I’m not going for ever,’ she said, shocked that he thought he was never going to see her again. ‘I’ll come back when the Milsons do.’

  ‘You won’t, me darlin’,’ he said softly. ‘You’ll get stuck in over there, I knows that. From what I’ve ’eard it’s a big brave country, a fitting place for a brave girl like you. Just you write to us and tell us all about it. Dolly can read as good as you and she’ll write back for both of us.’

  ‘Now, afore you get settled in that chair, let me show you round,’ Dolly said, anxious to lighten the atmosphere. She held out a hand to Matilda. ‘I’ve got the bed all aired for you.’

  After the parsonage the cottage seemed very small. Just the kitchen with a little scullery leading off it, and the parlour which Dolly used as the tea room when it was too cold or wet for people to sit in the garden. It looked very bare and cold after the warm kitchen, with only half a dozen small tables and chairs in it and a glass-domed stand in which, she explained, she put her cakes on display.

  ‘I won’t open it up again till Easter,’ she said. ‘Lucas has just given it a new coat of whitewash, and I’ve taken the curtains down for a washing. But it looks real pretty with the tables laid nice and a few flowers.’

  Dolly’s bedroom went right across the front of the cottage and Matilda had to stoop down to see the river out of the windows set in the sloping ceiling. It too was very bare, just a brass bed covered in a gaily coloured patchwork quilt and a chest of drawers, but spotlessly clean and smelling of lavender.

  ‘You like the smell?’ Dolly asked as Matilda bent to sniff a bowl of it on the chest. ‘That’s yer father’s doing. He brought back great clumps of it in the summer, he said he thought it was the best perfume in the world.’

  The room Matilda was to sleep in had clearly been specially prepared for her. It was smaller than the front room, and much less austere. Frilly print curtains hung at the small window, the patchwork quilt on the iron bed was all worked in pinks and blues, and a rag rug softened the waxed floorboards.

  ‘I rushed to finish that quilt when I knew you were coming,’ Dolly said. ‘You might be going to America, lovey, but this is your room anyway. Lucas told me so much about you, right from when we first met. But you are even nicer and prettier than he said. No wonder he’s so proud of you.’

  Matilda wished she felt able to hug Dolly. Somehow her home encapsulated all those dreams and hopes she knew from her father that he’d once shared with Nell before she was even born. Tragic as it was that her mother hadn’t survived to realize any of them, it was good to know Lucas would live out his days in peace and comfort with a loving woman worthy of him.

  ‘I’m so glad Father found you,’ she stammered out. ‘I won’t feel so bad about going away knowing he’s got you.’

  Later, after the delicious beef and oyster pie, Lucas went out to work in his boat again, and Dolly spoke of how she felt about him as she and Matilda sat by the stove.

  ‘He’s everything I ever wanted,’ she said, her small face looking dreamy and young. She had unusually good teeth for a woman of her age, small, white and even with none missing, and now she was wearing a frilly mob-cap with her grey hair hidden she could pass for ten years younger. ‘It’s funny how things turn out sometimes. When I was a young girl I dreamed of falling in love with a rich, handsome man who would rescue me from being poor. I was very poor too,’ she laughed, seeing Matilda’s look of surprise. ‘Much worse off than you were, lovey. I tell you, there was ten of us all living in what weren’t much more than a stable, and the animals shared it at night too. At ten I was sent to work in the laundry of a big house nearby and if it hadn’t been for seeing how rich people lived I expect I would have ended up with a life just like my mother’s.

  ‘Well, like I said, I kept dreaming of this rich man who would save me, and I suppose that’s just what Mr Jacobs did, though he weren’t handsome or rich and I never fell in love with him. He came to the house once when they were having this big party, he made lovely cakes and pastries, you see. I reckon it was his baking that attracted me, I always was a greedy little sod. Well, we chatted a bit, I found out he made a good living selling his cakes and stuff to the gentry for their parties, and he must have taken a shine to me right off, because he said he needed an assistant.’

  ‘Was he English?’ Matilda interrupted. Dolly didn’t draw breath once she got started.

  ‘Born here, but his folks were Austrian Jews,’ she said. ‘They were pastry-makers too. Anyway, that’s how it started. I went to work for him, and when he tried the funny business on I said he’d have to marry me first.’

  Matilda’s eyes opened wide with surprise. She hadn’t expected something so cool and calculated of Dolly. ‘Well, he was no oil painting,’ Dolly chuckled, and her double chin wobbled. ‘Small, scrawny, with a beaky nose and not much hair. He was already thirty then.’

  ‘And how old were you?’

  ‘S
ixteen,’ she said and grinned. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Matty. I was fond of him. I admired his skill at baking and he was a kind, decent man. So I married him. Good job I did, or I wouldn’t be sitting here now in this nice cottage with a bit of security behind me. But I earned it. I worked eighteen hours a day once he got the shop in Cheapside.’

  ‘You didn’t love him though?’

  ‘Not like in a romantic way,’ the older woman smiled. ‘We were good friends, and we were snug together. He taught me all I know including how to read and write. I missed him too when he passed on. But there were times I regretted not marrying a man I felt some passion for, and that I never had the luck to bear any children. Oh heavens! I am running on! I didn’t mean to give you me life story. What I started out to say was that when Mr Jacobs died I thought that was me finished an’ all. I’d lost my looks and I thought I was much too old to even hope of happiness with another man. Then along came Lucas, with his lovely blue eyes, and my heart went all fluttery.’

  Matilda wasn’t sure she liked to be told Dolly felt passionate towards her father. It didn’t seem quite proper.

  ‘I’m glad for you both,’ she managed to get out.

  Dolly laughed. ‘I’ve made you blush, that’s bad of me, but I wanted you to know how it is for us. I think you and me are very alike, Matty, sort of direct, ’cept you don’t talk so much! You speak so nice, you’ve got nice manners, and I know from yer father it’s none of his doing. I managed to pick up me airs and graces along the way, an’ all, I certainly weren’t born with ’em. Don’t you go marrying a man just for his money though! Try and fall for someone who’s got some by all means, even true love can fly out the window when you’re hungry. But don’t just look at the money, make sure he’s kind and he makes you laugh.’

  By the time Matilda was ready to leave with her father the following afternoon, she found she could hug Dolly spontaneously. She was a real treasure, kind, generous and so very lovable. Her personality filled the little cottage, her laughter and chatter was like being wrapped in a warm blanket. To see the woman tenderly buttoning Lucas’s coat for him and tying a warm muffler round his neck before he went out brought a lump to Matilda’s throat. It was touching to see how she valued the little things he did for her too, like making her an early cup of tea or putting the ashes from the stove on to the path outside to make it less slippery for her.

  Matilda felt she could go to America now with a happy heart. Dolly and Lucas would grow old together, treasuring what they had together because both of them knew what it was to live without it.

  ‘Make the wedding at the beginning of April,’ Matilda urged Dolly as she took her leave at the door. Although it was only half past three it was already nearly dark, and biting cold. Dolly had given her the coat she promised, it was dark blue serge with a rabbit collar, but although it was very much warmer than her shawl, by the time they got to Chelsea she’d probably be frozen stiff. ‘And will you try and get George to come too?’

  ‘I will,’ Dolly replied, flinging her arms around her and enveloping Matilda in a smell of lavender. ‘It will only be a quiet affair, just us and a few friends I’ve made along here. But just you remember this is your home too. If you change your mind about America, you can come here. Now go, before you make me cry.’

  ‘So what do you reckon on Dolly?’ Lucas said as they got to midstream. He had to shout as the wind was strong and blowing his words away.

  ‘She’s just perfect for you,’ Matilda replied, pulling one of his rugs around her. ‘I think as Reverend Milson would say you ought to get down on your knees and thank the good Lord.’

  ‘I ’ave, Matty. I’ave,’ he said, his face breaking into the broadest smile. ‘All I wish was that I met up with ’er when yer mum died instead of Peggie.’

  ‘You once told me “Never dally with a grievin’ man”,’ Matilda said, quick as a flash. ‘So I’m glad you didn’t meet her then, however much I would have liked her as a mother.’

  ‘That’s true,’ he chuckled. ‘Glad you remember your old man’s pearls of wisdom.’

  *

  Three months later, in mid-April, Matilda was in the guest bedroom at the parsonage with Lily, trying to get the huge leather cabin trunk closed. She put her whole weight on it but the lock and catch stayed stubbornly two inches apart. ‘It’s not going to shut, Madam,’ she said wearily. ‘There’s too much in it.’

  Lily put down the evening dress she was folding on the bed alongside other clothes and linen she wanted to take, and added her weight to the lid, but it made no difference. It still wouldn’t close.

  ‘We’ll have to take out that blue counterpane,’ she sighed. ‘I don’t suppose we’ll need that immediately, so maybe it can go in with the things to follow us.’ She slumped down on to the bed and covered her face with her hands. ‘Oh Matty, I’m so sick of all this!’ she wailed.

  Matilda was very tempted to tell the woman to buck up and stop feeling sorry for herself. At Christmas she had seemed happy enough at going, but since then she’d gradually worked herself up into a lather of anxiety about it. Every day she seemed to find some new complaint or worry, refusing even to try to look on the bright side. She seemed to imagine that the whole of America was a wasteland where people lived in shacks without any comforts or even shops to buy things. She wanted to take absolutely everything she and her husband owned, not just clothes, books, bed linen and china, but dozens of lengths of material to make clothes for the future too. So far the trunk had been packed and unpacked six times.

  Yet Matilda did feel some sympathy – her mistress was settled here in Primrose Hill and she loved the parsonage. Her husband had arranged it all with little thought for her feelings, fears for her daughter, or the long sea voyage, and Lily was now close to breaking down from sheer panic.

  Matilda flung back the lid of the trunk and lifted a few things out, putting them on the bed. ‘I’ll do it,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you go and lie down for a while, you look so tired.’

  Lily hesitated. She wasn’t just tired but completely exhausted. She hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in months for worrying about what lay ahead and Giles just didn’t seem to care that she was distraught. Matilda was the only person who appeared to understand how she felt and she wanted to voice her appreciation.

  It was so very ironic that this girl whom she had initially feared should become so invaluable to her. She worked so tirelessly and cheerfully, not just at the jobs she was employed to do, but instinctively turning her hand to anything that was needed. In truth Lily knew she was far more than a nursemaid – adviser, companion, friend and family member now She didn’t know how she would have got through these past few weeks without her help.

  ‘I can’t leave it all to you,’ she said in a small voice. ‘You’ve done so much already.’

  Matilda was touched by the gratitude in the woman’s voice. She had thought all the extra washing, ironing and mending she’d done recently had gone unnoticed. ‘There’s not so much left to do now,’ she said with an encouraging smile. ‘You go and lie down. It’s nearly time to get Tabby up from her nap. I’ll take her out for a little walk so it’s nice and quiet for you.’

  ‘You are a good, kind girl, Matty.’ Lily impulsively reached out and touched the girl’s arm. ‘I’m so very glad you are coming with us.’ She turned and hurried away then, leaving Matilda bug-eyed with amazement.

  In three days they would be taking the stage-coach to Bristol so that the Milsons could say goodbye to their respective families, then a week later they would be taking a ship from the port there. Matilda hoped that once they were on their way Lily would cheer up and perhaps even start to enjoy the adventure of the trip.

  Yet despite the apparent enthusiasm Matilda was displaying to everyone, she had her own private fears and doubts. Last week while over in Barnes for the wedding, she’d almost been tempted to stay there for good. Dolly could do with a waitress for the summer, and to see that riverside garden bright with daffodils, ch
erry blossom and the weeping willows with their new pale green leaves unfurling made America much less appealing.

  But she steeled herself against backing down by reminding herself that Tabitha needed her and it was the chance of a lifetime. At least she had the memory of that lovely wedding tucked away in her heart. Of Dolly in a pale lemon dress with a matching hat, and her father in a borrowed frock-coat. And little George! It had been so good to be with him again, and such a shock to see him in long breeches and a boiled shirt, his red hair neatly cut. He was quite the little man, talking about his work on the wagon delivering goods, grooming the horses and how much he liked Mr Gore the carter and his wife. Getting away from Luke was the best thing that ever happened to him. Now he had a chance of growing up as honest and decent as his father.

  ‘Can we go up to the top of the world?’ Tabitha asked as they left the house for the afternoon walk. It had been raining that morning, but now the sun had come out and the air smelled clean and fresh.

  Matilda giggled. That was Tabitha’s name for the top of Primrose Hill, in her innocence she thought that the view from there was of the entire world.

  ‘We’ll go just as long as you don’t ask to be carried on the way back,’ she replied.

  In a year Tabitha had gone from a merry, waddling baby to a somewhat serious little girl. Her baby fat had disappeared, leaving her a little too thin, and aside from the melting brown eyes she’d inherited from her father, every other feature was turning into a copy of her mother’s. Her once button-like nose had grown a little sharp, even her dark hair which had once curled so readily now had to be coaxed with rags or it just hung limply. Aggie had recently, and rather unkindly, pointed out she wasn’t going to be the beauty her parents anticipated, but plain or pretty, Matilda adored her. She was so quick, she questioned everything, and even at only three and a half she had a mind of her own.