A Little Death (3 page)

Not that I saw them much, not then. They were always with the nurse. It was always ‘nurse’, never ‘nanny’. She was a very religious woman—a Christian, but a different sort to the rest of us. The older servants were very suspicious of her, because she kept telling them, ‘I’d never touch one drop of drink, not if it was poured in a golden cup.’ Not that I ever noticed any of them drinking either, but they thought she was making herself out to be superior because of her religion and they didn’t like that. To be honest, I was more than a little bit frightened of her.

Master Edmund was sent off to school soon after Mrs. Lomax died and Miss Georgina and Master Freddie went to live at Dennys for good. Mr. Lomax was to stay on in London. The London house was half shut up and I was afraid I’d lose my place, but the housekeeper told me I was to go to Dennys with them, because they needed an extra pair of hands for the cleaning, so I was thrilled with that. I went down there on the train: ‘Third Class and Servants’. The nurse took off and left me with the bags, and I got in a terrible muddle and couldn’t find a porter. But the house! I loved that house. It was made of pale bricks, with a green veranda running all round the bottom and a porch with flowers and a wooden seat. It had decorations all up the wall in shiny bricks, with lovely flowers and leaves carved in a
sort of frieze, and a beautiful stained-glass window. And there was grass! I’d grown up in a city and I felt as if I was escaping, except I wasn’t going for the fresh air, I was going to work, and I knew I’d be lucky to stick my nose out of the scullery door once a week, never mind country walks. But still, it was all there outside, even if you could only see it through the windows.

I was ever so nervous the first time I opened up the big kitchen door at Dennys. Inside it was all steam and noise, and everyone seemed to be in a tearing hurry. I didn’t know what to do, so I just stood quiet against the wall and wondered if anyone would notice I was there. That was when I met Ellen. She come straight up to me: ‘Hello, I’m Ellen.’

I said, ‘I’m Ada. Am I meant to come in here?’ because they were all so busy I thought I must be in the way. She said, ‘That’s where the door is, isn’t it?’ in the cheeky way she had and grabbed hold of my trunk. ‘I’ve to take you up to my room. You’re sharing with me.’ The minute I set eyes on Ellen I knew I was going to like her. She always looked a mess. Always cheeky and always a mess. She had yellow hair that flopped about and big round blue eyes. Her cap was always shoved on to the back of her head with great hanks of hair hanging down, and even if she was told to go and tidy it up it would be all over the place again in five minutes. Well, she took me up to her room and they’d got a sort of camp-bed thing fixed up for me to sleep on because it was the only space there was. The room was so small you couldn’t open the door all the way, you just had to take one step in and you’d fall right on to the bed.

But I was glad to have a friend. That’s what I’d missed in the house in London. There were plenty of people, other servants I mean, but they were all older; they didn’t want to be friends with the lowest one. I had
two brothers and three sisters at home, and we’d all shared a room together with a curtain hung down the middle to separate the boys from the girls, and then I came away to work and had to stay in that tiny attic room and I hated it, being on my own.

Ellen could talk the hind leg off a donkey, she had so many stories to tell. The first night I was there I hardly had a wink of sleep, we were talking and laughing away, but I didn’t care, I was so happy. The next morning, though! I felt terrible, and Ellen and I were up and down ladders, lugging pails about, brushing the wallpaper, cleaning the paint, unstringing the blinds, you name it. It’s a miracle no one sent us up a chimney. When I had the charge of my own staff, if I’d had two like me and Ellen I’d never have had them together working, not on your nelly. Never get anything done in a hurry with two like we were. But we were always put together, and of course it suited us down to the ground. We were up in one of the back bedrooms where you could see into the yard and Ellen was chat, chat, chatting away to me, when she suddenly stopped and grabbed my arm, ‘Ooh, look, Ada! There’s William!’ Well, I thought
oh-ho
, because this was a name that hadn’t cropped up before, and sure enough, Ellen turned red: ‘I think he likes me, Ada. He works for Mr. Vincent.’ Mr. Vincent was the butler. Then she said, ‘He always stops to talk to me and he’s ever so handsome.’

I said, ‘Oh, get on with you,’ but she fair pulled my arm off.

‘Quick, Ada, come on, let’s go and change our water, then you can see him.’ My water wasn’t any more dirty than hers was, but of course I followed her like a ninny.

Ellen was looking round for William, but I thought: I’m down here, I may as well change my water, so I went to the tap. I shut my eyes for a moment to enjoy
the little bit of sun and when I opened them, there was this man standing there as if he’d just fallen out of the sky or something, looking right at me. I don’t think I’ve ever felt such a fool in my life, being caught standing there asleep on my feet like a horse, and it was worse because he was handsome, just like Ellen said. He looked more foreign than English, with black hair and a browny sort of skin. He said ‘How do you do?’ to me, and stuck out his hand to shake. I was so confused I didn’t know where to put myself. Ellen goes, ‘This is William,’ as if I couldn’t have guessed it from the daft way she was looking at him.

Then he said to me, ‘Your bucket’s run over the top.’ There was water everywhere and I hadn’t noticed. Then of course I had to stand there beside him while Ellen filled up her bucket. He said, ‘Ellen has told me all about you. You’re a very important person.’

I could feel myself going scarlet. ‘I never said that!’

Then he said, ‘Ellen seems to think so. She seems to like you very much.’ Looking at me like it was beyond him to see why anyone would like me at all, never mind very much. I thought, who does he think he is? He certainly thought he was clever. He was nineteen or twenty, I suppose, and he must have had all the girls he met go mad for him, looking the way he did. I thought: Well, he needn’t think I’m going to go spooney over him. But Ellen was, trying to look out for her water and us at the same time, chattering away nineteen to the dozen.

All I could think of was how silly the pair of us must look and I wasn’t half glad when William went off back to his work. But then Ellen started up: ‘Ooh, he’s so handsome, isn’t he handsome, Ada?’ She couldn’t leave the subject alone for five minutes. She got sillier and sillier about it—she told Mary and a couple of the others:
‘I think William’s taken a fancy to me,’ and instead of telling her to pull herself together like they should have, they were all ears, listening to her nonsense and joshing her about having a young man. Telling her it was true, even. I thought: I hope William doesn’t get to hear of it, he’s got enough opinion of himself already— but of course the true reason was because I didn’t want him to think I had anything to do with a lot of silliness.

One day, we had a stack of sheets to turn sides to middle and of course Ellen wasn’t lifting a finger; she had her nose glued to the window in case you-know-who should come along. Yammering away as usual, but I wasn’t paying any attention. She was like the wireless, was Ellen. It’s company, but you don’t take in all what they’re saying. William frightened the life out of me, tapping on the glass, and of course Ellen couldn’t contain herself. She would have bashed her brains out getting the window up if I hadn’t helped her. William had this lovely silver tray that he’d filched from the dining room and he put it in the window, so we could see there were two beautiful red roses on it. He said ‘Good-morning, ladies’ as if we were a pair of duchesses sat there sewing.

Ellen goes in feet first: ‘Ooh, William, aren’t they beautiful? Is it for me?’ I just sat there, I wasn’t going to jump up and down for him.

But he held out the flower towards me. ‘Won’t you take your rose, Miss Ada?’ Miss Ada! I thought: I don’t want the stupid thing, specially not if it was pinched, which I thought it must be.

Ellen took it and practically threw it at me, ‘Here you are, take it!’ so she could talk to William. I never touched it, just left it in my lap and went on with my sewing, but I could see William’s face over Ellen’s
shoulder and I knew he was putting on a show for me. She was gushing away; ‘Oo, William it’s ever so sweet.’

Then he said to her, ‘Aren’t you going to give me a little bit of something nice for it?’ I couldn’t believe it! He was looking straight at me when he said it, his eyes were laughing, but of course she was too taken in to notice.

I thought, that’s not fair, even someone as daft as Ellen doesn’t deserve that, so then I said, ‘I can hear someone coming,’ and that got him moving pretty sharply. Ellen slammed down the window hard enough to break the glass and stuffed the rose down the side of the chair.

Of course, no one came and she went all suspicious: ‘You never heard no one, Ada, so why say you did?’

I said, ‘I thought I heard Mrs. Mattie,’ because that was the housekeeper’s name.

Ellen said, ‘No you never. You’re jealous, Ada. I never thought I’d see that from you.’ I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t say the truth, which was that William didn’t care that! about Ellen, nor ever would. I was glad when it was time for me to go up with the tea-tray, I’ve never wanted to get out of a room so much. So off I ran as fast as I could, and I fell right over Jenny in the passageway and nearly broke my neck. In big houses like those, there was always some poor mite that did all the roughest work and at Dennys it was Jenny. She was a mental defective, but harmless enough. She was tiny, with such a skinny little neck it looked as if her head would just go wibble-wobble and fall right off, and her arms were like two sticks. Every time I looked at her I’d count my blessings. Mind you, she had a better situation than most of her kind—at least, she did until what happened to Master Freddie.

Anyway, I’d come a real cropper and I was busy putting
myself right again when I saw William down the corridor. He was just lounging about, leaning against the wall, looking like he owned the place when he shouldn’t even have been there. Well, I had to walk past him to get to the kitchen anyway, so I thought, right! And I marched straight up to him: ‘I want to talk to you.’

Well, he just couldn’t resist it: ‘To what do I owe this honour, Miss Ada?’ He’d just watched me tumble down—I noticed he never offered to help me up—and there he was, hands in his pockets, looking like he thought he could break my heart with one snap of his fingers. That look of his!

It made me furious, and I said, ‘Why don’t you save that for Ellen? She likes it, I don’t. And don’t call me Miss Ada. Why do you have to do all that?’

I thought: That’s told him, but he said: ‘All what?’

‘Giving Ellen a rose and carrying on like that.’

This is William: ‘Like what?’

I blurted out: ‘Like you was her fancy man!’ I didn’t know what a fancy man was, not really. I thought, suppose it’s something dreadful, but I’ve said it now; I can’t take it back.

William said, ‘But I gave you a rose as well, didn’t I?’

I said, ‘You only did that because you want to get round Ellen.’

‘No, I didn’t. You’re worth ten of Ellen, anyone can see that.’ And he levered himself away from the wall and was off. ‘You’re worth ten of Ellen.’ I still can hear him saying it. Well, I didn’t know what to think. No, I tell a lie, I was pleased. Of course I was pleased. I felt guilty because it was Ellen and she was my friend, but I never asked him to say it and if he liked me, well, it wasn’t my fault, was it? He’d looked straight at me and said it, and I thought it was wonderful.

I went to the window and had a quick look in the glass to see if I’d changed at all. I don’t know who I thought I was going to see, the Queen of Sheba, but it was still the same old Ada. I haven’t told you what I looked like, have I? A fish, that’s what I thought I looked like. A lot of people with red hair have that look, especially if they have a big mouth. Big pale mouth and pale eyes, that’s what does it. My hair was nice, chestnut, but I’ve never had any eyelashes to speak of and I’m all over freckles. I look as if someone flicked a brush full of brown paint at me and forgot to wipe it off after. So I wasn’t going to win any prizes, but I felt like I could after William said that. If he’d said, ‘Oh, Ada, you’re so beautiful,’ well, I wasn’t stupid, I’d have known it was flannel. But he didn’t and it was the way he looked at me, that was what mattered. And there I’d been, saying to myself, ‘I won’t take any nonsense from him.’

After that I couldn’t bear it when Ellen started on ‘William this’ and ‘William that’. I’d be listening to it, all her nonsense, but inside I was thinking, stop it, stop it. I think I would have told her, but she’d never have believed me, and nor would any of the others if I’d told them.

It was right after that, poor Master Freddie died. It was just—well, it was beyond anything you could think, really. Because who could do that to a little child? That’s what I could never understand. It was a lovely summer day, I’ll never forget it. I was working in the scullery when I heard the scream. I was up to my elbows in dirty cloths, but I rushed straight out into the passage to see who it was. Miss Louisa and Master Roland were staying at Dennys, and her governess come tearing round the corner and smack! into the opposite wall, just as if she was blind. I can see her now, she had a grey skirt and a white blouse; she was blundering from side
to side in the passage, hips bumping against the walls, beating her hands on them, almost falling, screaming and screaming as if she was possessed. I called out to her, ‘Are you hurt? Shall I fetch Mrs. Mattie?’ but she just went on as if I wasn’t there at all. I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid to go up to her because my hands were wet from the washing and I thought: Even if she has gone mad, she won’t like me to get her nice clothes all dirty. She ran through the door and into the yard, and I was going to follow her in case she did herself a mischief, but Mrs. Mattie suddenly came up behind me and grabbed me by the arm. She was only a little mouse of a woman, but she had quite a force when she wanted to—you should have seen the bruise I had, it was like a chimney-sweep’s handprint on my arm. I said to her, ‘I was just going to see about the noise, Mrs. Mattie,’ because I didn’t want her to think I was the one screaming and shouting, but she wasn’t having any of it. She got hold of my shoulders and spun me right round, ‘You’re going back in the scullery. Now!’ and pushed me in the chest. Well, I just stood there gawping at her. Just then, Ellen and some of the other maids came dashing round the corner to see what the noise was, because honestly, you could have heard it a mile off, the racket Miss Louisa’s governess was making. Well, there was Mrs. Mattie and I in the middle of the passage, about five steps away from the back door, and Mrs. Mattie took one look at all these girls and she went and stood in front of that door like a policeman, yanking me by the collar so I didn’t have no choice but to go with her. I heard my frock rip, which was just as well because she was holding me so tight I was choking. The others stopped dead when they saw us barring the door like that. To be honest, at any other time it would have been funny, because they were all standing there in
their brown-and-white uniforms boggling at us, it was like a herd of cows had got into the house. Mrs. Mattie was holding me in front of her so I couldn’t see her face, but I could feel her eyes all right, burning into Ellen and the rest of them. ‘Stop! Get back to your work, all of you. There’s no need for this rumpus.’