A Little Death (9 page)

Well, that was that and I didn’t think any more of it. I was too busy worrying in case a baby came. I thought it took about six months before you had the baby, so I kept checking, but my waist got thinner, not fatter, and in the end I said to myself this can’t be right, so I didn’t bother with it after that. I had no idea there were other signs. If I’d known
that
, I could have put myself out of my misery in a couple of weeks. It might seem funny enough now, but it wasn’t at the time. But there was William, all prepared to go off to his new situation, baby or not, or so I thought at the time. The last thing he said to me was, ‘You’re a pal, Ada.’ And I thought, well, thank you so kindly, I don’t think.

When he left, that was the time when they found out that Miss Georgina’s nurse wasn’t looking after her like she should, so she was sent away. Miss Georgina was very ill after that; for a time they thought she wouldn’t live, but she’s always been stronger than she looks.

Ellen and I weren’t getting on at all. She’d cried her eyes out when William left, but I never tried to comfort her—I had enough troubles of my own. So then she used to say, ‘You don’t care, Ada, you’re glad he’s gone,’ and ‘You were always jealous,’ and that sort of thing. It got on my nerves. There’d be times when I’d nearly burst out and say something, but then think better of it and stop myself; and she’d start up again and it was like that day after day, the moment we were alone she’d start up saying these things. I felt so needled with it I didn’t know what to do and, of course, one night it had to come out. I was so tired I’d barely managed to drag myself up the stairs and as soon as I’d shut the door she started with William this, William that, William the other, sitting there with her hair all over her shoulders looking like a tragedy queen. Well, I just turned to her and said, ‘Don’t talk nonsense. William
wasn’t ever gone on you, you dreamed it all up by yourself.’ The moment it was out of my mouth I wished I’d never said it, but it was too late.

She never said a word, just blew out the candle and got into bed. Then she said ‘I know’ and I heard her give a little gulp, like she was crying.

I felt like such a devil, I leaned over and patted her shoulder and said, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.’

She was turned away from me, but she said, ‘No. I wanted it to be true about William, but it wasn’t. So don’t say you didn’t mean it when you did.’ I didn’t know what else to say and after a minute she said, ‘Get back in bed, Ada. Go to sleep.’ Not in a nasty way, but like she was suddenly dead tired. Of course I never had a wink; I was turning it over and over all night, whether she’d ever speak to me again.

But I needn’t have worried because the next night we had a good old talk, the first we’d had for months. I felt bad because I didn’t need to say what I had. If she wanted to believe William liked her, where was the harm? It was pride that made me say it, because really I wanted her to know that William was keen on me. But I was too much of a coward to tell her that, so I said the other thing. Ellen told me, ‘I’m not going to stay here much longer.’

I couldn’t think what she meant. ‘Why, where are you going?’

‘I’m leaving here. My mother’s written and told me she’s poorly so I’m going home to look after her.’

I said, ‘Oh, that’s terrible.’ I didn’t know much about Ellen’s family, except that she had a lot of brothers and sisters, more than I did.

She said, ‘I’m glad I’m not staying here.’

I said, ‘Is it because of William?’

‘No, it’s because of Mr. Lomax. Drinking.’ Because
Ellen had spotted it right away and at first I thought she was making up a story, but when it turned out to be true she never once said ‘I told you so’, which she could have, easy.

So that night I asked her, ‘How did you know about Mr. Lomax before anybody else could see it?’

She said, ‘Because my father was a drinker.’ You could have knocked me down with a feather—I’d never heard anyone say such a thing before, a secret thing about themself or their family. I felt it was a great honour for me that she was telling me about it, because with those things, nobody ever talked about them. Ellen said, ‘He used to come rolling home every night and clobber my mother, and if any of us young ones got in the way or made a noise, we’d get it too. When I sent my wages home I used to pretend it was something else, because if he got to it before my mother did, it would be straight off to the pub and she wouldn’t see a penny.’ Then she said, ‘I was so frightened when I saw him hit my mother, but I knew if I did anything he’d start on me. When he died I was glad, because he couldn’t hit her no more. Honestly, Ada, I’ve seen too much of that, drinking, and I wouldn’t stay here if you offered me double the wages.’ And she meant it. ‘I may not be much, but I won’t stand for that.’ To this day, I remember her saying that. Because—and this may sound queer—that was the first time I’d ever heard someone talking as if they had a
choice.
I mean someone like me, not some important person. I mean, for people like me, working people, well, you went where you were put and if you didn’t like it you could lump it. I don’t know if Ellen married, or what sort of man it was, but I’m sure it wasn’t a drinker like her father.

I said, ‘I’ll miss you’ and I meant it. She was my best friend, and I never saw her again.

I’d never come across any drinking before, but it wasn’t long before I got my first experience. It was the little things at first with Mr. Lomax, slurring the speech, seeing the extra brandy and wine on the side every night, on the tray, well, even the slowest could put two and two together. Then there was the business of serving dinner. Mr. Lomax had been home a couple of weeks and some of the girls said to me, ‘Oh, you’ve got to go in and serve the dinner.’

I said, ‘But I don’t know what to do.’

‘Oh, don’t worry, in you go.’

Well, I’d never served the dinner, it wasn’t my job and no one ever showed me how. The other girls brought all the dishes and things, and one of them gave me a shove through the dining-room door. Well, I suppose I should have guessed why none of them wanted to do it. Mr. Lomax was sitting on his own at the end of this great long table and his eyes were glazed from drinking. The fire was glowing out behind him and I thought he looked like the devil, sitting there in his big chair like a throne. It was just him and me in the room, no one else. I was shaking, frightened I’d drop something or do it wrong and, of course, that made me shake even more. There was no one to help me and Mr. Lomax looked as if he might go roaring out at me any moment. I nearly turned round and ran straight out again, but I thought: I can’t do that. I knew the others were waiting outside and I was sure they’d report it.

I put the food down on the table. I was tiptoeing about, trying not to knock anything, but he didn’t seem to know I was there. To be honest, I don’t suppose he would have noticed if an elephant had come and passed him the dishes with its trunk, he was in such a state, poor man. He never even took a mouthful, just reached out his hand—to get his glass I suppose, but he knocked
all the drink into his plate. I rushed forward to mop it up and he barked at me, ‘No!’ Then he said, ‘Take it away, I shan’t want any more. Go on, get out!’ The plate was swimming in brandy, all over the meat, and he hadn’t even eaten one mouthful. My hands were shaking so much that when I took the plate the liquid was shooting out everywhere, on the cloth, on me, on him. I never dared ask if he wanted anything else, I thought he’d just shout at me again. I fairly ran out of that room and I said to them outside, ‘I’m not going back in there, so don’t you say nothing.’ They didn’t, they knew they couldn’t make me. I kept well out of the way after that, but I saw the food come back to the kitchen every night, barely touched, and the bottles always empty.

Well, you can’t stop people talking and there was a fair bit of gossip in the village about Mr. Lomax. One or two even suggested he’d killed Master Freddie himself in an accident when he was drunk, but it was sheer malice because Mr. Lomax wasn’t even at Dennys when it happened. Some of them said, ‘Oh, he should marry again,’ thinking that would cure him of his drinking. He never did marry again. I don’t know why, but he grew to hate women with all his heart. If he saw something in a newspaper against women, even if it was just a joke or a comic drawing with some little remark, he would tear it out and save it up in a big box in his study. I suppose it was harmless enough, but seeing a whole box full of stuff about how bad women are, it wasn’t very nice. I never used to lift it up or touch it, I just got the cloth and dusted round. In any case, he’d roar and shout if you moved anything. Because he’d got so he wouldn’t throw anything away—Miss Georgina has that from him, hoarding. None of us girls dared go into his study when he was there, we’d be on our tiptoes outside. ‘Is
he in there? Can you see him in there?’ It was like that all the time. Then, if the coast was clear, we’d rush in and out again, it was dreadful.

Miss Georgina lay upstairs for five whole months with her illness. She was so sick and bad that no one thought she’d live above a month, but Mr. Lomax never went near her. Some of them—the servants—said it was because he was only fond of the bottle and didn’t care about his daughter, but I could never believe that. I used to think, he’s lost his wife, he’s lost his youngest child, if Miss Georgina dies, it’ll break his heart. I thought that was why he never went to her, that he couldn’t bear to see her because he thought she was dying, but I don’t know if it was true. Let’s just say that Mr. Lomax was a very unhappy man, because there’s no doubting that and, in any case, Miss Georgina was so poorly she probably didn’t know who was in the room. In all my life I never heard her mention her father once, except for a conversation we had during one of the air raids. It was a very nasty one, and she and Master Edmund had come down to the basement to sit it out. We were in my little sitting room and Master Edmund had a bottle of gin, but he never brought the proper glasses. He wouldn’t let me go upstairs to fetch them, so we were sitting there drinking it out of teacups. Well, I don’t know if it was the gin or the raid or what it was, but I started telling her about my father, how he never took me on his knee or cuddled me as I saw other fathers do with their children. Then I saw her face and I thought, oh, I shouldn’t have said that. She stared into her cup for a moment and then she said, ‘At least he didn’t break your heart. My father broke my heart.’ Then she said, ‘Perhaps I deserved it.’

Well, I looked at Master Edmund, but he was asleep,
which was a mercy. ‘That’s a terrible thing to say, Miss Georgina. You mustn’t say things like that.’

She laughed it off. ‘Well, I always think children are like dogs, wanting to be stroked all the time. Can you imagine anything more tedious?’ Typical! She’s never said another word about it, at least not in my hearing. But I think it was very hard for her, because she was always his favourite when she was small and then he turned right away from her when he started his drinking. She married Mr. James to get away from him, I’m sure of that.

If you were taking up a tray for Miss Georgina, you always had to make sure Mr. Lomax never saw you. You could slip up the stairs with no trouble, but then it had to be got across the landing. You’d try to be ever so quiet, but there was always a floorboard that creaked and he’d just appear from nowhere: ‘Where are you taking that?’ You had to make an excuse and not let on it was for Miss Georgina. Nobody told us to do this that I recall, we all just understood that we must do it, because Mr. Lomax didn’t want to hear anything about Miss Georgina. Well, no one wanted to put up with that sort of treatment and quite a few started talking about getting another place.

Then Mr. Lomax accused the butler, Mr. Vincent, of stealing his brandy. He was shouting it out in front of some of them and Mr. Vincent couldn’t have that, especially with his staff there to hear it. So he left and three or four went with him, and a couple of others soon after. Mrs. Mattie couldn’t do anything, but she didn’t begrudge them. They got a good character, provided they deserved it, of course, and within the year they were all gone except the two of us, Mrs. Mattie and me. We did our best, but we couldn’t keep up the old standards. I used to miss Ellen so much. I’d got used to
having somebody to talk to, even if it was just to say ‘good-night’, and our little room felt ever so lonely. I thought, well, she’s gone now and I’d better make the best of it. I’ll have a decent bed for a change, because hers was more comfortable than mine. I used to lie down on that bed so tired I thought I’d never get up again, and sometimes William would come into my mind. I never thought about him when I was worried about the baby coming, only afterwards, because I didn’t want to remember all that nasty stuff. But once I knew I was safe from that, well, I wasn’t
trying
to think about him, he just came into my mind, and it was nice to remember his face and the things he said. I didn’t expect ever to see him again.

But most of the time I was too busy to think about William. I was trying to do five people’s work. I thought: I’ll go on working like this until I drop down dead. I could have just said ‘enough’s enough’, but it never occurred to me. Perhaps it was because I’d been so happy at Dennys before that, I couldn’t imagine leaving. But that’s when my aches and pains started, from that time, and I wasn’t twenty-two. Mrs. Mattie begged Mr. Lomax to let her take on more staff, even one, but he wouldn’t have new people in the house, said he couldn’t trust them and she’d have to do without. I suppose I stayed as much for her as for anyone. She’d worked her way up to be housekeeper and now she was back cleaning up, sweeping up, things that no housekeeper would dream of doing in a place that was halfway decent, but she had that much loyalty… I couldn’t leave her to run the whole house by herself. And you could say she took me under her wing, really. I can picture Mrs. Mattie standing at the kitchen table, making pastry with the big range behind her. It’s not quite dark outside, the sun is nearly gone, but you can
still see the tops of the trees above the hedge and the room is so bright, with a lovely smell of cooking. I used to sit by her and have my cup of tea and a piece of bread and dripping. I’m not saying she was like a mother to me, or anything like that; she was still very much the housekeeper even though it was this queer situation we were in. But she did used to talk to me—mostly it was about how to run a house and look after things, and I learned more cooking from watching her and what she told me than I ever did from my mother. Looking back, I know it was done on purpose… I said, I wouldn’t have left her, but of course it was her left me in the end. Remember what I said about Ellen talking like she had a choice? Well, that’s what I mean, because it wasn’t a matter of whether I decided to stay with Miss Georgina and her father, it was decided for me when Mrs. Mattie retired and went to live with her married sister in Plymouth. She wasn’t married herself, but it was always ‘Mrs’ for the housekeeper and for the cook. She wrote to me once, and reading between the lines I’d say the two of them didn’t get on; but she was like me, she never had any choice. There she was—fifty-five, sixty—and Dennys had been her whole life; she’d been there since she was a girl. She should have been able to look back and be proud of a position like that, because it was quite something to have been the housekeeper in a place like Dennys, but how could she, poor woman? And she never approved of Miss Georgina, the way she was just left to run wild. Miss Georgina was always tearing around and leaping out of corners, as if she thought she was a fairy—perhaps that’s what she did think. I’ve never known what goes on in her mind. I didn’t know then and I don’t know now. Nor should I want to, I might add. Mrs. Mattie used to watch after Miss Georgina when she was running around and the
look on her face! She’d squeeze all her mouth up like the top of a duffel bag when the string’s pulled and she’d go, ‘Oooh… Oooh, I don’t know what’s going to become of her.’ Lucky for her she never lived to see, I say, because that would have broken her heart even if the other didn’t.