Shadow Baby (26 page)

‘No,’ said Evie.

‘What then?’

‘My clothes and shoes.’

The lady went on staring at her for a long time. Evie tried not to flinch. She knew this person would be trying to judge her character from her face and demeanour, and she tried to put into her expression her honesty and obedience and desire to work hard and not be any trouble. She knew she had succeeded when the lady said,

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‘Very well, I will take the risk, but I’ll be watching you and one sign of impertinence or worse and you’ll be out. Now pick up that bag and follow me.’

Luckily, the lady walked so slowly because of her age and needing her stick that Evie had no difficulty making her way behind her. There was a pony trap waiting on the corner of Bank Street and the lady got into it and gestured to Evie to do the same. An old, vacantlooking man was driving the trap and as soon as both women were settled, he flicked his whip and the pony set off at the slowest of paces. Nobody spoke. They went down Bank Street and round the corner into Lowther Street and round another corner into a square. Evie saw the houses here were all very tall and set close together in terraces. The trap stopped outside a house in the middle of the terrace on the far side of the square and the lady was helped out by the driver. He did not help Evie nor did he lift down her bag. She managed to heave it on to the pavement, though the effort strained her arms. Slowly the lady mounted the stone steps and the door was opened as she reached it.

‘God knows what I’ve brought back with me, Harris,’ she muttered, ‘but in an emergency beggars cannot be choosers. We’ll have to watch her like hawks.’

Evie saw a very tiny woman, surely even older than the lady who had hired her, standing holding the door.

‘I don’t like this at all, Mrs Bewley,’ the tiny woman said. ‘It isn’t right, going to a hiring, it isn’t proper, it isn’t safe, it isn’t for the likes of you, it isn’t …’

‘Oh, hold your tongue!’ snapped Mrs Bewley. ‘I know all that, for heaven’s sake. But we need a strong young girl, we can’t go on without Hattie and Ella. The place is going to rack and ruin. You’re too old, I’m too old, and the discomfort was becoming insupportable. It was time I used my eyes and my head to see if I couldn’t find better staff myself. So be silent, woman. Take her up to the attic and then bring her down and get her started.’

Afterwards, Evie did not know how she had survived the first months in Mrs Bewley’s household. She had thought she knew what hard work was, brought up as she had been in the Fox and Hound, but she quickly decided that working for Muriel and Ernest had been restful compared to slaving for Mrs Bewley and Harris. They had her up at five each morning and she was never allowed to crawl to bed before midnight, with only a few minutes here and there

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throughout the day for her to eat and rest. She was, in the full meaning of the description, the maid of all work. And the work, too, was infinitely harder than it had been at the Fox and Hound. The Fox and Hound was a pub but it was not large. There were only six rooms besides the bar and all of them were small. But 10 Portland Square had twelve huge rooms on five floors and sixty-six stairs connecting them. Evie had to clean them all, take coal for fires to half of them and wait at table besides. She was drunk with exhaustion, visibly swaying on her feet by six in the evening, but if this was noticed it was never commented on. Often she thought that if the food she was given had been more substantial she would have had more strength, but she rarely had a good meal and existed mostly on bread and margarine and sometimes cheese or an egg. She had always been thin but now she saw there was hardly any flesh on her and her ribs showed through alarmingly. She could feel them with her hands as she dressed and undressed and she loathed that feeling, the evidence that she was becoming little more than a skeleton.

What sustained her was knowing she was in Carlisle, and therefore near her mother. Somewhere in this city Leah Messenger lived and, given time and opportunity, Evie would surely find her. She was allowed to go to church on Sunday, a request Mrs Bewley obviously felt bound to grant, though she was disbelieving that Evie really intended to go to church. ‘A churchgoer?’ she had queried, and had promptly subjected Evie to an interrogation. She had been challenged to recite the Lord’s Prayer and, when this proved easy, the Creed. Only when, for good measure, she had thrown in a few Psalms, faultlessly recited (Mrs Bewley got her prayer book and checked), was Evie grudgingly believed. Mrs Bewley herself did not go to church, on account of her leg, she said, but she directed Evie to St Cuthbert’s. St Paul’s was nearer, but Mrs Bewley did not approve of the vicar for reasons she did not divulge.

Every Saturday night, no matter how exhausted she was, Evie felt uplifted by the approaching excitement of Sunday. She could hardly sleep for the anticipation of perhaps seeing her mother without knowing it - any one of the women in church could be her mother. She knew, after the first Sunday, that Leah was not going to be found in the choir of St Cuthbert’s, since it was all male, and perhaps not in any choir, but she was sure she would be in some church on Sundays. The church she really longed to go to was Holy

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Trinity, but it was twice the distance from Portland Square as St Cuthbert’s, and Mrs Bewley timed her return. If she came back a minute later than the ten minutes allowed for the distance there would be trouble, and trouble was not something Evie could afford to risk. Even after she had been in Mrs Bewley’s household for a year she continued to be very careful to give total satisfaction and not to cause offence. But she saw that her goodness and her tolerance of harsh treatment in itself aroused suspicion. Mrs Bewley could not believe a young woman could be so docile and hardworking if she did not have some sinister ulterior motive. Sometimes she would look at Evie and say, ‘So butter doesn’t melt in your mouth, it seems,’ which would be followed, after a significant pause, by, ‘I don’t believe it, you’re too good to be true, you are, Miss. I’m watching you, mind.’

Watch Evie she did, closely, continously, and Evie was fully aware of her scrutiny. She knew Mrs Bewley hauled herself up all the narrow stairs to the attic on Sunday mornings and inspected it for stolen goods, though what there was to be stolen Evie could not imagine. She supposed jewels, since Mrs Bewley wore plenty of them. She had many glittering rings to decorate her gnarled fingers, and her throat was always circled with pearls. But if none of these was missing, why, Evie wondered, did Mrs Bewley go searching for them? At least her search would be quickly over. There were three truckle beds in the attic, but of course Evie used only one and was glad she did not have to share the miserable space with the two other maids there had once been in Mrs Bewley’s employment. Otherwise there was only a chest of drawers and Evie’s old bag to ferret around in and that could not take long. Yet Sunday after Sunday she could tell Mrs Bewley had yet again put herself through the pointless ordeal of climbing up to the attic and Evie marvelled at such persistence. The strain made her employer even more bad-tempered than usual and, if the thought of Sunday morning made Evie happy, the thought of Sunday evening depressed her. Nothing was ever right during the rest of the Sabbath. Every service she performed was criticised and it was on Sunday nights she invariably gave way and cried herself to sleep.

She was always ashamed of this weakness. She had hardly ever cried as a child, when she had felt desolate and despairing, but now she seemed to need to. It did no harm. No one knew she cried. She rose soon after dawn on Monday mornings with no visible evidence

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of having wept and neither Mrs Bewley nor Harris saw her at that hour. She had fires to rake out and reset, and the kitchen range to black-lead, and all manner of gruelling jobs they were not around to see. Nobody spoke to her until noon and then only to give her orders. In that vast house there were only the two old women, and most of the cleaning and polishing Evie did was to keep unused rooms in perfect condition. Only four rooms were regularly used the kitchen, the dining-room, the breakfast room, and Mrs Bewley’s bedroom - though the drawing-room fire was lit once a week when Mrs Bewley received visitors. These were few. The vicar of St Cuthbert’s came every three weeks, took a cup of tea and departed within the half hour. The doctor came once a month, took a glass of sherry and made his escape even more quickly. Otherwise there was only a lady called Miss Mawson.

Evie did not know who Miss Mawson was, or why she visited Mrs Bewley every week, staying at least an hour. ‘This is my new maid,’ Mrs Bewley said to Miss Mawson the first time Evie was in her presence (bringing in more coal for the fire) but she did not, of course, tell Evie who Miss Mawson was. Only Harris could have done that, but Harris never engaged in any kind of conversation with Evie. She was very deaf in any case and completely in her own world. She shuffled about the house doing little except issue orders to Evie, and when she was asked a question never replied. In the mornings Harris did the orders for the day, sitting at the kitchen table and laboriously writing lists. These lists were the same every day, but every day they were made on a fresh sheet of paper. Harris’s real job was to cook, but she had told Evie she was the housekeeper and that Evie was to remember that. She had no interest in Evie at all (unlike Mrs Bewley, who was consumed with curiosity as to her background and real identity). It was easy to imagine how maids could have run rings round this old Harris without her noticing, until Mrs Bewley would have been mad with rage. In fact, she heard Miss Mawson say, ‘Thank goodness you have got rid of those two wicked girls. I hope this one will be more satisfactory.’ Evie longed to hear Mrs Bewley’s reply, but it was not given while she was still in the room.

Miss Mawson always came at three o’clock in the afternoon and it became one of Evie’s many jobs to let her in. Harris liked to receive people but her deafness meant she very often did not hear either the bell or the knocker, and Evie had been told to answer the door

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herself. She changed her clothes to do so, which is to say she took off the all-enveloping grey calico apron and cap she wore in the mornings to do dirty jobs, and put on an old white apron of Harris’s. This was quite an attractive garment and Evie liked it. It only covered her front, exposing rather too much of her by now woefully worn once best dress, but it had frills round the shoulder straps and the bottom edge. It had been starched and kept pristine and dazzled Evie with its whiteness. Harris was no taller than she was herself, so this splendid apron fitted her and, while wearing it, she felt she had some self-respect after all. Miss Mawson was always particularly gracious to her, saying, ‘Good afternoon, Evie’ and ‘Thank you, Evie’ when her coat was taken, and ‘Goodbye, Evie’ as she left. Evie loved the sound of these simple pleasantries and murmured them to herself afterwards. Miss Mawson had a way of investing the unremarkable words with some real meaning and it was comforting to hear her. Also to see her. Evie did not know her age, but she thought Miss Mawson not more than forty or perhaps younger. She had lovely clothes in muted colours, dresses of lilac silk and pearl grey wool and blouses intricately embroidered round the cuffs and collars. She was, in fact, elegant in an understated way, and Evie responded to this elegance instinctively.

She wanted very much to discover where Miss Mawson lived and why such a kind lady visited the unkind Mrs Bewley so regularly and often, but she never came any nearer to doing so. But she saw Miss Mawson at church. Evie always sat near the back in an aisle ,seat behind a stone pillar. She crept in some five minutes before morning service began and took a prayer book and hymn book from the sidesman without looking at him. She liked to sit listening to the organ and preparing herself for the first hymn, but now and again she would look up and across the pew and watch the grander folk make their confident way down the main aisle to the family pews. They always held their heads so high, these people, and the mothers in particular were beautifully dressed in their Sunday best. There would be a good deal of subdued hissing at sulky children who were not being quiet enough and then the family group would settle down, a row of bent heads saying their prayers. Evie looked and drew her coat tighter around herself, feeling cold and tired.

Miss Mawson walked down the aisle on Sunday with such a group - a father, a mother, two young boys and an older girl - and Evie presumed she was with them. Immediately she saw her as an

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aunt, the father’s sister surely, since she did not resemble the mother, but when the family entered their pew Miss Mawson did not after all accompany them. Instead she slipped into one of the unmarked pews where anyone could sit, and it was clear when the service had begun and nobody had joined her that she was on her own. This somehow excited Evie. Miss Mawson, like her, was alone even if their circumstances were very different. Perhaps Miss Mawson lived entirely alone and had no family. Evie longed to follow her home, but of course there was no possibility of being able to do so. After the service, she hung back behind the departing crowd instead of darting out first to avoid the embarrassment of passing the vicar when he had taken up his station at the door. She followed Miss Mawson at a distance, separated by a dozen or so people, and was out of the church in time to see her walk down St Cuthbert’s Lane. Evie usually went that way back to Portland Square in any case. But coming into English Street, Miss Mawson crossed in front of the town hall and turned left down Scotch Street. Evie’s way turned right and down Bank Street. Standing for a precious few minutes on the corner (she could run the rest of the way home and still arrive on time) she strained her eyes to see where Miss Mawson was going. Towards Eden Bridge, it seemed. Then she must live somewhere in Stanwix. Gratified to have learned this, Evie hurried along wondering why, in that case, Miss Mawson attended St Cuthbert’s and not a church in Stanwix. Was it out of some old loyalty? Or because she was in the habit of worshipping at different churches for variety? Or even that there was something special about that Sunday’s service at St Cuthbert’s?