The Wet Nurse's Tale (29 page)

“Oh me,” said Carrie one evening as we sat in the kitchen before bed, “I’d do any amount of blacking if only for a bit of warmth. I’d black all day.”

“Yes,” said Leah, the cook’s girl, clutching her shawl around her, “it’s as cold here as in my mam’s house. They all told me it would be warmer in the city when I come up.”

At night, I would take Davey in my bed with me and we were warm enough, but during the day, I kept him wrapped. Even so, he had a cold and twas hard for him to nurse with his nose that plugged, poor thing.

Another strangeness was her dress. She had begun to demand that Lily put her good gowns on her even though it was early morning. Lily, who had felt her slap oftener than us others, was too afraid to cross her. Thus there came Mrs. Norval walking down the stairs at ten o’clock in the morning dressed in lace with a train or deep velvet with the huge crinoline just in fashion. Often, because she sweated so, Mrs. Norval would make Lily leave the buttons undone and the dresses would gape open in the back. Indeed, she was bony enough that they hung on her even when she did them up.

“She must have had more bosom at some time,” said I, after seeing her in the lace one and Lydia agreed. The mirror was not big enough for the lady to see her whole form, so she would call to me or to Lydia to tell her how she looked. We always promised, of course, that she was a vision for we were servants and knew our places.

As to the baby, more and more she did not want to see him or to hear him. She never said a word about it, but only winced when she came into a room and he was in it. It did not happen often, for I kept him cloistered like a little monk so that she would not be bothered. She seemed to have forgotten about him most times, and then when she saw him it would be as it surprised her that such a thing was in her house. Once, when she came into the kitchen, she saw me nursing him and seemed ashamed, like as if she had never thought such a thing possible. For two days after, she did not ask for me once but shunned me, but then she suddenly seemed to forget that the thing had happened at all and required me to bring her a cup of clear broth which she did not drink.

One December morning, Mrs. Norval sat at her desk in her morning room when the post came as usual. Lydia said that she brought it up on the salver, as she always did, and that she believed that one of the letters was from Mr. Norval. Lydia could not read but had delivered the mail often enough that she could tell the difference by the stamps.

Twas hardly ten minutes later that Lydia came up to my room to ask me to attend Mrs. Norval and to bring the baby with me. We looked at each other in surprise.

“What does she want with him, do you imagine?” I said as I retied his little bonnet and gave him another jacket; twas an especially blustery day.

Lydia shrugged and so down I went carrying Davey, who looked like an angel: his eyes were round as nuts and he smiled as if we were on an outing.

I knocked and went in. There was Mrs. Norval in her fancy dress with the back open, a’pacing, with her arms wrapped around her bony frame like as if she was in her own embrace. The letter, clutched in her hand, was behind her, for her girth was so slight that her hands nearly met behind her back. She did not unwrap her arms but took a step toward me when Davey and I entered the room.

“Ah, Susan Rose,” said she, “you have brought the little baby.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said I.

“And how does he do?”

“He does very well, ma’am. You may see for yourself how fat he’s got.”

She wrinkled her brow. “Yes,” said she. “He is very fat indeed. Is that all from . . . just . . . from what you give him?”

“Why, yes,” said I. “But very soon, ma’am, if you think it proper, I believe it will be time for a bit of porridge.”

I could have bit my tongue to say it for what if I had put the idea of weaning into her head. But she was not thinking on that. Instead, she looked alarmed. “Porridge?” she said in a high voice. “Why do you ask me? How am I to know? How am I to guess whether he will choke on it? He must not choke, Susan Rose! Is he very healthy, do you think? Will he live without porridge? Is it too soon? How am I to know?”

Her face had paled and her lips pinched, which I knew for signs of one of her fits. I thought to distract her if I could.

“Now, miss,” said I firmly, “this little man will certainly not choke. I shall watch him as if he were my own and give him the tiniest bites possible. He is as healthy as a plum. Shall you like to watch him eat? It may help you feel less afraid to see him like a bite of cereal very much. It has always made me laugh to see a baby eating porridge for the first time for they make the strangest faces you could care to see.”

“Watch?” she said. “Shall I?”

So, we went down into the kitchen, and Mrs. McCullough made her to understand that the stove would need to be hot enough to heat the water, and then she watched him eat his bit of porridge which he did love very much. I wondered at the situation for it was so strange: he was my baby, I would have liked to have this time for myself, but I had invited her in for pity of her. She seemed to have few people of her own, save her brother James, who would come and visit her on a Sunday.

The letter she had received that December morning became a matter of curiosity between us servants because we could all see the difference in the lady after she’d got it. The day after she received it, she refused to get out of her bed at all. When I brought her her tray, she turned her face away. I felt her forehead and she did not seem feverish though she stank very much of sweating. She asked me about the baby and whether he was well and I told her that he was. When later in the day I suggested that we call in the surgeon, she sat up and asked for a big dinner of beef and salad, but Lily told us that she lost it in a bucket right after.

“I saw her put her fingers in her throat so she’d retch,” giggled Lily, who is a twit.

“Well, is it still there?” asked Carrie.

“It’s not mine to remove,” said Lily, eating an apple. “Disgusting, is what it is.”

“I’ll get it,” said I. “Just watch the baby, for he’ll wake soon.”

The day after, she got out of her bed and told Lily to put out her walking clothes though it was very cold—as cold as when I was a girl and John brought a rook into the house and said it had fallen, frozen, out of the sky. Then, though it was still early morning, Mrs. Norval told me to prepare Davey for a stroll.

“Oh, but, miss,” said I, “it is so cold outside! And it is so early in the day. Will you perhaps prefer to wait til it clears a bit?”

“I have heard that exercise is the best thing for a baby,” she said, taking up her gloves and hat. I followed her down the stairs. “He will enjoy the walk very much.”

“But, miss,” said I.

She would have nothing but the stroll. I took out the pram and quick got my coat and hat for she was most impatient. Then I wrapped my baby in blankets and buntings, as much as I could to keep him warm, and put him in the pram and we went out into the street, with me pushing and Mrs. Norval walking in front of us.

“We will go to the park,” she said, though she had to raise her voice to be heard over the wind. We saw very few people on the street for the weather was not fit for a dog. There was a constable standing miserable on a corner and he looked at us exceeding strange.

She had her walk. We turned into the park and walked along the path, which made a loop. At first, Davey was quite warm though Mrs. Norval allowed as how she thought he’d suffocate in all the clothes I’d put on him. But as the stroll progressed and the wind howled yet more, he began to feel the cold and cry. His little cheeks was getting raw.

“Miss,” said I, filled with the worrying of it, “missy, I believe the baby’s cold.”

“Nonsense,” she said. “I have heard exercise is the best thing for a baby,” she continued, just as she’d told me earlier, in the same way. It gave me a chill, how she said it, more than did the weather itself, for it was like as if a tin soldier said it or some wood figure, without no heart in it. By this time the baby was crying full out with the cold of it and my blouse was wet with the milk that I let down to hear him cry. I did not know what to do and thought that soon she would turn back, if she had any sense left at all. Indeed she did not. She walked like we was in an army, so brisk and so hard, I had almost to run to keep up with her as I pushed the pram.

As we rounded the path and came up to the Hampstead Street gate, she did not turn out of the park as I had wished she would but instead began another turn. By this time the baby’s wail was so loud that I thought she’d put her hands on her ears that way I’d seen her do, but though she looked distressed at the sound, she would not stop her tread. We took another turn and then another.

I thought of a train and how it’s kept to its tracks by its nature and how it cannot move from them unless it is turned over and wrecked. I thought I might have to slap her to change her mind but I did not dare to do it. I prayed to God to help me and then I thought of what to do.

“Miss,” said I, running to catch up with her and talking very loud, “miss, the lady down the street who has a baby—and they all say she’s such an excellent mother, that’s Mrs. Stone? Do you know her?” (There was no such lady. She was a figment of my mind.) “Mrs. Stone lays much stock in walking the baby, just as you have said, missy, but only thrice around the park or else it’s too much for its constitution and it will cry all the night through. Missy, you know how he keeps you up if he cries so you must let us go back to the house now.”

I said it very firm and very loud and also I stood up on my tiptoes and very near her so that she would have to look up at me. This, I had noticed, served as a way to call her back to herself. It did not work so well this time as it had before—she did not drop her strange look.

“Mrs. Stone?” she said. “I do not know a Mrs. Stone.”

“Yes, you do, ma’am. Do you not recall? She lives just down the street, and you have told me several times that she is a most excellent mother.” (More lies, may God forgive me, but I was desperate.)

She looked confused but then nodded at me. “I shall walk.”

I could no longer wait for her permission. I thought to myself that I would simply leave her there by herself and suffer what consequences I must when she returned to the house.

“Jane,” called a voice.

I turned and saw Mr. Brooks, the brother of Mrs. Norval who she called by James. He came hurrying across the park to us, holding his hat on his head with one hand and his coat closed around his neck with the other.

“Look, miss, here’s Mr. Brooks,” I called out, but Mrs. Norval would not stop.

“Jane, I say,” said Mr. Brooks, huffing as he came up. He looked at me in wonderment as we followed close after Mrs. Norval.

“Sir, I must take the baby in, he is froze.”

“What has happened?” said he.

“I beg your pardon, sir, but I must take the baby in, if you please, sir.”

“Yes, yes,” he said and ran to catch up with the lady. Still she would not stop until he caught her by the arm. “Jane, did you not hear me? What brings you out in this weather? With the little baby? Oh, Jane!”

“I have heard that exercise is the best thing for a baby,” I heard Mrs. Norval say to her brother in that same strange way she said it to me.

I waited to hear no more, but ran home and snatched the baby out of the pram. His little hands was icy and his lips were blue. I tore off his clothes and ripped open my bodice and put his little body right onto my warm breast. I wrapped a blanket around the both of us and allowed my body to warm his. He was so cold, Reader, that I wept over him and feared he would not warm up, but that was just a mother’s terror. At first, he was too frozen to suckle, but soon he became more lively and sucked away very fierce, as if he was quite furious with what had occurred.

When he was all warm and sleepy, I put him in his cradle and crept down the stairs to the kitchen. There I found Carrie and Mrs. McCullough and Lily. Lydia was upstairs with tea for Mrs Norval and Mr. Brooks which he had ordered when he had brought her home.

They asked me what had happened and I told them, and I admit that I burst into crying which I normally would not do. Carrie came to put her arm around my shoulder and Mrs. McCullough gave me a cup of tea while I recovered myself.

“I was afraid the baby would die, I was,” I sniffled.

“Ah, but it’s all right now,” said Carrie, comforting me. “I wonder what it is she wants with the baby, though, so sudden-like. For ever so long, she never seemed to know he was here at all, bless him.”

Lydia, who had come back into the room, said, “It’s something to do with that last letter, mark my words.”

“Yes,” said Mrs. McCullough, “it must be. Her husband’s letters affect her very strong. After the last, she took to her bed for the longest time until Mr. Brooks came to get her out of it.”

“But what could this one have said?” I wondered. “I have seen it lying on her writing desk in her room but I cannot make out any words of it.”

Lydia said, “Well, it may have nothing at all to do with what’s in the letter. It is hard to know with her, she is so strange.”