Mrs. Engels (4 page)

IV. Cross to Bear

Imprisoned, they have us, in their hospitality. Already here two days longer than planned. It's my own fault for not being firmer with Frederick. I ought kick up more of a row.

At first I was worried about getting in the way. I didn't want to walk in on top of anyone or trespass on their time. But, as it happens, I keep finding myself alone and lost and off the beaten course, in rooms that go into rooms, up and down and every which direction. My heart goes out to Jenny, having to govern such a monster, and I've come to admire her practice of going away to rest in case she might be tired later in the day, for I've learnt that a mere glance into the parlor is liable to dizzy you, for the depth. It certain can't be
work
that drains her. Since our arrival I haven't caught her doing anything but
make
work with her queer times. She has a joke: “Better a dry crust and manners at eight than fowl and vulgarity at five,” but in actual fact, she wouldn't be content with crusts at any hour, and the maid is left bearing the brunt. Boiling up and bringing in and fettling about, the little creature attends to all of their little wants, and she does it on her own, too, with no others to aid her (for it seems that with servants, if not with any other portion of life, Jenny knows how to make a saving).

Ah, the poor wee puppet! The petty pocket! The pigwidgeon! Nim—I can't deny it!—has succeeded in fascinating my attention. Despite my strict resolve to be cool in her company—“Don't notice her,” I says to myself whenever she comes in—I always find myself flushed and susceptible. Whether it be the quiet show she makes of her modesty or the delicate manner with which she wields her influence, or her sad-sad-secret (now so-so-public) that cuts a perilous edge around her china figure; whatever it is, she absorbs me, and I'm fain to get her alone. I must find a moment, I think. I must separate her and present myself proper to her. I must hold out a hand. I must get an idea.
What is the nature of your powers? What do you do that makes the women bend to your will and the men so heated to mount you?

My chance comes now. The a.m. of another empty day. Jenny off for her nap. The Men locked into the study upstairs. The Girls gone to play shuttlecock in the garden for want of something else going on. I'm supposed to be watching them and learning what's what, only I know my break when it comes and make an excuse of my bladder.

I find her sat on a stool in front of an open cupboard in the storeroom, drooped and snoring over a book that lies on her lap. Her dress is tucked up and the laces of her boots are loosened. She's taking her two minutes, and I'm sorry to have come in on her.

“Can I help you, Mrs. Burns?” she says before I can steal away. Her face is bleary, but her voice is bright, not a hint of sleep in it.

“Oh, Nim, I—”

Apologize, is what I want to do, for barging in and robbing her leisure. But more than that, I want to apologize for Frederick. There's no excuse for the shabby treatment he's been giving her. It's as if he believes that by overlooking her, by paying no regard to her, by passing orders for her through the rest of us, he'll convince us once and for all that she means naught to him, that not even his words are worthy of her (when, in fact, there's not a single word he speaks that doesn't fly right at her, that doesn't explode about her like fireworks, that, in the noise and the bright light, doesn't call to our minds that day some twenty years ago when her charms got such a hard handle on him that he decided the only means of release was to lift up her skirts and put his seed inside of her, not a single thought given to the harvest such behaving so unfortunate bears). Aye, that's what I want to do, apologize for all of Frederick's
behaving
. But instead I fumble with my tongue and shrink within myself and end up saying, “So how do you find it here? Do you go much to the parks?”

With red-shot eyes she pins me, and I hold her stare, and we stay like this for a time; two maids across a storeroom floor.

At last she closes her book and stands. “It's nearly time for the picnic, Mrs. Burns.” She checks the floor around her and rummages in her pockets, looking to see if she's dropped anything. “We're to gather in the parlor,” she says. And when she unbends and sees me still standing here: “Perhaps you'd be more comfortable waiting up there?”

Spread out on the couches, fidgeting and yawning and trying to ignore Karl's pacing, we bide for Jenny. After forever has passed, she swishes in and kisses the air about us, a hand busying itself with a button of her coat.

“If we want to make the best of the afternoon we should set off immediately. It could be raining in an hour, and then we would have missed the fine spell, or?”

Behind her, Karl widens his eyes and purses his lips as if to say, “Don't look at me, I've had a lifetime of it.”

Once outside the gate, Frederick and Karl stride ahead, arm in crook, their heads tilted close so as not to drop anything important between them. The Girls hold hands and swing their arms like children; they each lead a dog by a strap. Jenny lets them gain a bit of distance before drawing me in and sallying forwards. Nim follows with the basket.

“Nothing extravagant,” says Jenny. “Just some roast veal, some bread and cheese, some ale.”

I turn and smile a weak smile at Nim, the tiny doll straining under the poundage.

The Men wait for us at the Heath's edge. Karl asks whether it's a good idea to go to the usual spot, given the strong breeze. “Would some place more sheltered be better?”

Jenny suggests under one of the big oaks, and we agree. Ohing and ahing like she's just solved the National Debt, we agree. And I, for one, must be careful of my mood.

We set off again. The dogs are released onto the grass. Tussy skips after them. A sullen-looking Janey searches for flowers to press. The trees are tossed. The wind is loud in the leaves. The kites in the air fly slanted and set their owners straining. Down in my bad lung there's a pain. Naught to fret over, but there. Too much fast air after these long days spent between the dust of the mattress and the smoke of the fireside.

“Karl is so happy to have Frederick nearby again,” says Jenny now. “It does me good to see him happy, he's been so nervous of late.”

“I'm glad, Jenny. That's nice to hear.”

“Of course, he hasn't been alone. My own hair is gone gray thinking about Laura in France. Her second baby lost, and now pregnant again. Caught up in this damned war. It has us all hysterical.”

“You oughtn't worry, Jenny. Laura'll be fine. Doesn't she have Paul to look after her?”

“Paul?” she says, whipping a handkerchief from her sleeve and making a whisk of it at me. “Paul is
French
. And a
politics
man.”

“
Mohme!
” Tussy is calling from about twenty yards. “
Mohme!
Mohme!
”

“What is it?” Jenny says without slowing her gait.

Tussy runs to catch up with us. She comes round us and, walking backwards, her hem dancing around her boots and liable to trip her up, holds out a feather. “Look what I found. Which bird is it from, do you think?”

Sighing, Jenny takes it and runs it through her fingers. “A common magpie,” she says, and hands it back.

Tussy looks at it a moment, disdainful, and drops it. Wanders back onto the grass.

“And it's not only Laura,” Jenny says when we're out of ear-shot again. “I also worry for these two. Look at Janey there and tell me she isn't radiant? And Tussy, perhaps she even more so. But I'm anxious. I'm anxious that, for this same reason, they are all the more out of place and out of time. And with the life we give them, how will they ever meet a good ordinary man?”

“How will any of us?” I says.

She squeezes my arm and grants me a smile. “Oh, Lizzie, you
are
funny. But perhaps I am not expressing myself well. I speak of a subject it is hard for people who do not have children themselves to understand. A mother will look at her children, and if she sees that one of them has already been denied the chance of a happy kind of life, she will naturally worry that the others will go the same way. I know I sound like a philistine when I say it, Lizzie, but if they could but find husbands, a German or even an Englishman if he had a solid position, and get themselves comfortably settled; if they could do that, I wouldn't mind my own losses so much. The last thing I want is that they have the kind of life I have had. Often I think I would like to turn away from politics altogether, or at least be able to look upon it as a hobby to take up and leave down as I please. But for us, Lizzie, it is a matter of life and death, because for our husbands it is so, and I fear it has to be the same for our children. This is our cross to bear.”

I say naught. Thoughts and memories come vivid, of old desires and chances lost, and though there's regret in them, and mourning, it's not unpleasant to have their company. We walk on.

“But we must be optimistic, mustn't we, Lizzie? Rather than dwell, we must look forward to better things. And I do think we are entering a new phase, a happier time for all of us. Your move to London marks a change. I believe great things will happen now that Frederick is here. Karl has been so looking forward to it.”

“Frederick also. He's overjoyed to be out of that job. Only a month wanting till he's fifty, and he's like a young drake again.”

“Ha!” She hugs my shoulder. “And it is about time. Frederick's talents were wasted in that dusthole. It is true there was pleasure to be gained from taking money out of the enemy's pocket, draining it from the inside, so to speak, but enough is enough; the real work has to begin, and Frederick is essential to it. He really is a genius. Are you following his articles on the war?”

“Not myself, nay.”

“Oh, but you must, they explain—” She sucks in her breath. “Oh, I do apologize Lizzie, I wasn't thinking. I'll read them to you one of these days. Or better, I'll have Nim do it. She wouldn't mind. She likes to keep abreast.”

Up ahead, Frederick has stopped at a coster's cart to buy ginger beer for the Girls. I wish he wouldn't. I've seen it done in Manchester, the ginger boiled in the same copper that serves for washing, and it's not healthful. Jenny halts us in order to keep our distance from the others. She bends down and picks some flowers from the verge.

“What are these?” I says when she puts a posy in my buttonhole.

“Snow-in-the-summer,” she says. “It's rare to see them still blooming this late.”

“They're lovely,” I says.

She gives a vague smile and, seeing that the others have moved off, starts us up once more. “I realize I have been talking only of myself.”

“That's all right, Jenny.”

“Well, I do not want to talk anymore. It is only boring you and upsetting me. And distracting us from the other matter.”

The other matter is, of course, the house. She reminds me that the maid, Camilla Barton, is due to arrive in a fortnight's time, and gives me advice on how to keep her, which is harder than I might think, for things aren't like they used to be, in sixty-eight and the crisis years, when the good families were letting go of their help and the registries were brimming with girls to be had for the asking and for a price much closer to their worth. Nay, things have changed and a girl will walk if she finds a better situation, and it's often not even the mistress's fault, for it's difficult to define in exact terms what's owed a girl and what she herself owes, and not everyone can learn the art of leaving the servants alone.

“I recommend a second girl,” she says. “Frederick instructed me to find only the one, and I followed those instructions, but my true feeling is that you will need two. Everything works better with two. The girls are happier because they have company and get to sit down in the evening, and you are happier because the work can be divided out and gets done. You do not want to be a slave with your apron never off. London is your retirement. If I could afford it, I would get another.”

“Can't Nim manage? Has she ever threatened to leave?”

“Nim? Oh, she's different. We've had her for so long she's like family.”

In the distance, Karl beckons us to a tree where he thinks we ought lay the picnic. Jenny flutters her handkerchief in answer.

“Speaking of family, Lizzie, I would like to say something to you.”

“What's on your mind, Jenny?”

“I'd like to clean the air.”

“Does it need cleaning?”

“About your sister.”

The other matter. The
real
matter.

“Jenny, you don't have to. It's not important.”

“
Nein, nein,
it's on my mind, Lizzie, and I'd like to say it out.” She turns into the wind so the loose strands of her hair fly back over her bonnet. “Mary was your sister, Lizzie, and you loved her as any sister would and should, and I don't think little of you for it.”

“And I'm glad for
that,
Jenny.”

“You already know relations between her and me weren't easy, and I'm not going to insult you by pretending otherwise now.”

“Well, we can't get on with everyone.”

“But there are reasons, Lizzie, good reasons, I did not, as you say,
get on
with your sister, and I want to share some of those with you. I want to tell my side. Not to vindicate myself, you understand, or absolve myself of any wrongdoing, but to let things out in the open, so we can be friends, you and I, honestly and truly.”

I shake my head and keep my gaze on the path ahead. “What's past is past, Jenny. What's to be gained from walking back over it? Mary is gone, and what spite there was between you has gone to the grave with her. There's no point digging it out and giving it life again.”