by Jess Foley
‘It’s Sunday – January the thirteenth.’
‘Sunday the thirteenth!’ Miss Balfour’s voice was incredulous. ‘What happened to all those days?’
‘You’ve been so ill, ma’am,’ Lily said, ‘and senseless part of the time. Dr Hanbury’s been in to see you nearly every day. It’s been very worrying.’
‘And who’s been looking after me? You and Mary, I suppose.’
‘Not Mary, ma’am. She took the flu as well. She was that poorly, I told her to go back home till she was well again.’
‘So it’s just been you, has it?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Miss Balfour sighed. ‘I hope I haven’t been too much of a trial for you, Lily.’
‘I managed all right, ma’am.’ Lily bent and tweaked at the blanket. ‘I’ll put some water on to heat, so we can get you washed and changed. I’ll make up the fire too. After that I think I should get you something to eat.’
On the way downstairs she wondered how Tom had spent the night. She had thought about him constantly before eventually falling asleep, but she had no idea how she could help him out of his difficulties. She would give him what little money she had, but as for helping him find work or somewhere to live, such feats were beyond her.
As she entered the kitchen she said in a little whispered call, ‘Tom? Tom, are you awake?’
There was no answer. As she drew nearer the sofa she saw the blankets, neatly folded, lying on the seat. Turning to the stove she found that his clothes were gone from the clothes-horse. There was a small piece of brown paper lying on the table, and she moved to it and took it up. Written in pencil in his familiar hand, were the words:
Dear Lil,
Thank you for everything. I’ll find something somewhere so don’t worry about me. I’m sorry to have come to you in trouble when you already got so many things on your mind. I’ll write again soon.
Your loving brother
Tom
The January days had continued icy cold, etching Rowanleigh’s window panes with frost pictures and lengthening the icicles hanging from the eaves. In the middle of the village green the pond froze over, and the villagers put on their skates and their coats and mufflers and glided about on its surface. Miss Balfour continued to make progress, and recovered sufficiently to get out of bed. After a while the doctor ceased to make regular calls, while at the same time Mary and Mrs Nessant returned to their duties – much to Lily’s relief, so pleased was she to see the restoration of some sort of routine in the life of the household. With Mary available to take over the care of the mistress, Lily was freed once more to apply herself to needlework tasks.
For a time, with the two servants back in the house, Lily saw much less of Miss Balfour, for the latter rarely ventured far from her room. What little food she wanted she ate in the morning room or her study, leaving Lily to eat alone in the dining room or the kitchen. Then, towards the end of the month, the pattern changed again.
Lily was in the sewing room, working on a nightdress frill, when Mary came and said that Miss Balfour would like to see her in her study. Lily got up at once and went to her. She found Miss Balfour sitting behind her desk, writing in her ledgers. A bright fire burnt in the grate, and the room was warm. Already the daylight was fading.
‘Oh, ma’am,’ Lily said at once, ‘it’s so good to see you working again.’
Miss Balfour put down her pen, and looked at Lily over the top of her spectacles. ‘And not before time,’ she said. ‘I’ve spent enough days being unproductive, and letting things go to pot. High time I stirred myself.’ She paused, while Lily remained standing before the desk, feeling a little awkward, and not knowing for what reason she had been summoned. Miss Balfour added, a little gruffly, ‘But sit down, do. I’ve asked Mary to bring us some tea.’
Lily sat in the chair on the other side of the desk. She noticed that there was a small glass of something at Miss Balfour’s right hand.
‘You’ve been working at your sewing, have you?’ Miss Balfour said.
‘Yes, ma’am, I have.’
‘I’m afraid it all got rather interrupted with my illness.’
‘Yes.’ Lily ventured a smile. ‘But I’m catching up.’
‘Good. I have to say they’re very pleased with your work so far.’
‘Thank you, ma’am. I’m pleased to hear it.’
‘Indeed.’ Miss Balfour picked up the glass, sipped from it, then added after a pause, ‘And how are you? All the attention’s been on me. Are you all right?’
‘Oh, yes, ma’am. I’m very well, thank you.’
‘Thank heaven for that. Have you been looking after yourself? I mean – there’s not just one of you to consider, you know.’
‘I know. I’m fine – really.’
A knock came at the door, and Mary entered carrying a laden tray. Miss Balfour cleared a space on the desk, and the maid set the tray down and went out again. Gesturing to the teapot, Miss Balfour said, ‘You pour, Lily, will you?’
Lily poured the tea and passed a cup to her. The dying light deepened the shadows in the room. Outside the window the bare branches of the rowan had melted into the dark of the sky. Miss Balfour sipped at her tea then put her cup down and said,
‘I owe you a great deal, young lady.’
Lily frowned. ‘Oh, but, ma’am . . .’
‘A great deal. You did so much for me.’
‘Oh – but I did nothing that no one else wouldn’t have done.’
‘Ah, but there was no one else,’ Miss Balfour said. ‘I know now how sick I was – not even conscious for a time. Dr Hanbury’s spoken of it to me, so I know.’ She paused. ‘I’ve got so much to thank you for. Don’t think I’m not aware of it.’
Lily did not know what to say, and so said nothing.
‘It’s been a dreadful thing, this flu,’ Miss Balfour said, ‘but thankfully we all got over it. Though Dr Hanbury tells me there’ve been two deaths in the village.’
‘Yes – one of the blacksmith’s sons, and the postmaster’s assistant.’
‘Sad. It’s very sad.’ Miss Balfour sighed. ‘But now things are getting back to normal again, thank God.’
On the mantelpiece the clock ticked the minutes away. Miss Balfour finished her tea, then leant down to her right and brought up a bottle which she placed on the desk. After pulling the stopper she added a measure of amber liquid to that in the glass. ‘I’ll take a little more brandy too,’ she said. She lifted the glass, sipped from it. ‘I have some now and again – at Dr Hanbury’s recommendation. Though I don’t think I could ever get a taste for it.’ She gave a sigh, and then, a rarity, showing her large teeth, smiled, and added, ‘Not so with my tobacco, though. Oh, I would so like a cigarette now, I tell you. I could commit murder for one – and that shows how much improved I am – but Dr Hanbury says it’s too bad for my lungs. A woman smoking? My God, what next! The devil with my health, he doesn’t approve – that’s the truth of it.’
She sipped again at the brandy while the sky deepened to black and the fire flickered and crackled in the grate. ‘Agnes didn’t care for it, my smoking,’ she said. ‘In fact, there was nothing at all that Agnes liked about it.’ She set down her glass and picked up the framed photograph of the young woman. ‘It’s been eight years,’ she said. Her voice had taken on a gentler, musing quality. ‘We ran a school together, did you know that?’
Lily nodded. ‘Mr Shad mentioned it – in Shalford, I think he said.’
‘In Shalford, yes. It was very successful. Miss Chambers – Agnes – had a gift for it.’ She sighed. ‘I couldn’t run the place on my own after she passed on – so I sold it and came to live here at Rowanleigh. This is the house I grew up in. I was born here, and then eventually it was left to me by my father.’ She gazed into the face in the photograph then set it down on the desk again. ‘Those days in Shalford – they were the best days.’ Picking up her glass, she gave an ironic nod. ‘Brandy loosens the tongue. Sometimes too much. Though when you get
to a certain age you don’t bother so much about what people think. You can’t walk on eggshells all your life, and if you lose friends through it, then those friends were never truly friends in the first place. That’s something we discovered, Agnes and I.’
A flaming log shifted in the grate. Lily got up from her chair, and with the poker set the burning wood back in place. Before her eyes the flames danced, sending sparks reeling up the chimney. She took another piece of apple wood and set it on the fire. As she sat back down, Miss Balfour said:
‘Have you ever cared for anyone, Lily? Have you loved anyone in your life?’
After a moment Lily nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said.
Miss Balfour nodded. ‘You loved him.’
‘Yes, I loved him.’ A pause. ‘I still do.’
‘But – you’re no longer together.’
‘No.’
‘And is there no hope – of your being together?’
‘No. No hope at all.’
Miss Balfour gave a sigh. ‘That is sad.’ She paused. ‘I’ve heard some stories of love. Oh, indeed. Some of them from the young women who came here to have their babes. Some of the stories were quite foolish, while others were quite tragic. And so many of them were the same. Love – whether you’re a housemaid or a duchess – it’s a great leveller.’ She lifted the brandy glass to her mouth, then set it down again, untouched. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I’ve had enough for now.’ Turning back to Lily, she said, ‘I think you understand, then.’
‘Understand?’
‘What it is to lose someone you love.’
‘Yes, but not in the devastating way you do.’
Miss Balfour briefly closed her eyes and gave a little shake of her head. ‘Oh,’ she breathed, ‘it is the most terrible thing – to see the death of someone you love. To watch someone you love deteriorate, waste away. To watch the flesh fall off their bones, and see them in pain and be able to do nothing. In the end you almost pray for death to come, so that the dreadful suffering will stop.’
She sat staring off for some moments, then, coming out of her preoccupation she said, ‘It was after I got back here to Rowanleigh that I took in the first of the young women. After the school I needed to be occupied, to have some kind of purpose, to be of use, and I’d seen what could happen sometimes to girls who got themselves into such a predicament. I had a sister. Rose. She fell in love with a fusilier, a tall, handsome young man, but he went off and she was left in the lurch. When she found she was to have his baby, our parents cast her out.’
‘What – what became of her?’ Lily asked.
Miss Balfour looked towards the fire. ‘She . . . she jumped into the millpond.’ Then with a sigh she said, ‘All these sad memories. It does no good to dwell on the past.’ She lifted her teacup and sipped from it. ‘Gone cold,’ she said, and set it back in its saucer. Turning to Lily again, she said, ‘What is his name, this young man whom you love?’
‘Joel.’
‘Would it be – painful – to tell me about him?’
Lily hesitated a second. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Though there isn’t a lot to tell.’
Miss Balfour waited, and after a little pause Lily began her brief story. She told of how she had met Joel in the carriage company’s office, of their walks in the park, of their last day together, when they had sat on the grass and he had sketched her portrait. She told of how they had gone to the inn in Lettington and had later got caught in the rain.
‘And that was the last time you saw him?’ Miss Balfour asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Does he know – that he’s to become a father?’ Miss Balfour asked.
‘No,’ Lily said at once, her voice sharp in the quiet room. ‘The child is not his, and he knows nothing of it.’
‘The child is not his?’ Miss Balfour could not hide the puzzlement in her voice.
Lily’s hands were clasped tightly before her, her face lowered into shadow. After remaining silent for some seconds she began, hesitantly, to tell of the happening. ‘My employer,’ she said, ‘– at the house where I was maid. He was my father’s friend, a trusted man . . .’ And so she went on. She had not spoken of it before, other than when she had told her father, and then it had been in the most terse manner, simply stating the bare fact. Now, sitting facing Miss Balfour across the desk, it was like a kind of release, like water surging through a fractured dam. The story poured out, and with it her tears, and she could stop neither.
At last she came to a halt, the tears drying on her cheeks. She felt drained. Miss Balfour sat looking at her, her mouth set. ‘Oh, my dear,’ she said, and leant forward, touching her fingertips to the back of Lily’s hand. The little gesture of sympathy threatened to undo Lily again, and she had to hold on to her control.
The clock ticked into the quiet, along with the faint crackle from the burning apple logs. After a while, Miss Balfour turned towards the window and said, ‘Look at that – the sky is black. Oh, I’ll never get used to winter.’ She got up from her chair. ‘Shut out the night, that’s the best we can do.’ At the window she stood for a moment looking out onto the winter-dark garden, then pulled the curtains closed.
Coming back to resume her seat at the desk, she said after a moment, her voice a little more brisk, ‘So – what are your plans for tomorrow?’
Lily was grateful for the change of tone, and glad that the laying bare of her heart was behind her. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’ve still got a good bit of sewing to do.’
Miss Balfour smiled. ‘Yes, but tomorrow’s Sunday. I should think you’ve earned a day off.’
Lily shrugged. ‘Well, I hope to do some reading also, if I have time.’
‘Looking in at the sewing room,’ Miss Balfour said, ‘I see you’ve been reading von Sybel’s book on the French Revolution. Have you found it interesting?’
‘Yes. It’s fascinating.’
‘You have other books there too. I saw a French grammar, a study on the Tudors, a book on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood . . .’
‘Oh, there’s so much to learn,’ Lily said. ‘I hope you don’t mind – my taking the books from the library.’
‘Of course not. That’s what they’re there for. It gives me pleasure to see that you do.’ She looked steadily at Lily, frowning slightly. ‘I realise,’ she said after a moment, ‘that until now I’ve known hardly anything about you.’ She paused. ‘The young women have come here over the years, and have stayed for seven, eight, nine months – whatever. And although I always tried to do my best for them, I never sought to – to get involved, to get close – in any way.’ Briefly she came to a halt, and then, as if she had perhaps said too much, added briskly, ‘But they were no worse for it. They had their babies and – and went away to get on with their lives – with whatever they had planned.’ She paused again. ‘What about you, Lily? What have you got planned?’
‘I?’ Lily shook her head. ‘Oh, ma’am – I’ve got no plans.’
Miss Balfour studied her. ‘You were working as a maid.’
‘Yes, a general maid.’
‘You could do better than that, surely.’
Lily was at a loss. ‘How?’ she said.
‘Well – for a start, you’ve got a brain. There must be some way in which you could use it. You must have had some ambitions at some time. I’m sure you didn’t set out to be a maid-of-all-work.’
‘No,’ Lily said at once, ‘of course I didn’t. I wanted to be a teacher.’
‘A teacher?’
‘Yes.’ Lily leant forward in her chair. ‘I wanted to be a teacher, like you.’
She told then of how she had begun her apprenticeship, and of how, due to her father’s financial situation, that apprenticeship had been curtailed. ‘So,’ she ended with a melancholy shrug, ‘I was sent to Whitton as a maid.’
‘And you would still wish this, I assume, to become a teacher.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Lily said, ‘but there’s no chance of it happening now. None.’
Miss Balfour conti
nued to gaze at her over her spectacles. Then after some moments, she said, ‘There might be a chance. Perhaps it isn’t too late. Perhaps it isn’t too late after all.’
Chapter Eleven
At last the bitter January went out, the ice on the village pond thawed, and the first green points of the crocuses pushed through on the Rowanleigh lawn. February came, dank and drear, and gave way at last to gusty March, and the fields quickened under the chill spring sun with the first signs of the harvest to be. Lily, from her seat in the sewing room, watched the changing seasons and wondered what lay before her. Under Miss Balfour’s tutelage she now spent most of her time studying. No more sewing work was delivered from Corster, and none would be in the future. Now, all Lily’s energies were directed into her resurrected aim of becoming a teacher, and it was, of course, all down to Miss Balfour. Since her illness, and Lily’s nursing of her, she had changed towards Lily, and was now doing all she could to help her. It might no longer be possible for Lily to go and study to teach in a school, Miss Balfour said, but that was no reason why she should not become a governess.
Lily had leapt at the suggestion, and with one aim in mind she and Miss Balfour had set about using the remaining time available. Miss Balfour, glad of the chance to exercise her knowledge and experience, took to the endeavour with enthusiasm. Each day under her supervision Lily studied English grammar, English literature, history, geography, mathematics, physics and French, the tuition in each subject taking her far further than had any lessons at the school she had attended in her younger days.
Giving Lily added pleasure was the fact that her relationship with Miss Balfour had blossomed. One sign of Lily’s growing status in her tutor’s esteem came with the suggestion that Lily should henceforth address her a little less formally. From now on, she said, Lily should address her as Miss Elsie. There remained in the older woman’s manner a certain bluntness, but there was no hiding the innate warmth of her nature, and as the weeks passed Lily’s admiration and respect for her grew.
