Polly's Story (13 page)

I met the vicar’s wife a few days later, when I went to visit Mrs Grimshaw next door who was laid up with arthritis. She had brought round some rosehip syrup for the old lady, and I could see at once what my mother meant. Such a kind, gentle face she had: rather round and plain, but the goodness shining out of it like a ray of warm sunshine. She knew our family quite well already, and I was glad to think my mother had someone she could call upon for help should it be needed.

What with visits to the neighbours, and playing with my sisters and brother, and sleeping in until nine or ten o’clock of a morning, my holiday passed happily enough. Yet it made me realize that Swallowcliffe was my home. I was a visitor in my mother’s house - a welcome one, to be sure, but now that Lizzie was growing so fast, there was hardly room to swing a cat in the cottage with me there too. I was ready to go back to work at the end of the week.

I found on my return that Harriet and Miss Habershon were getting on like a house afire. They spent their mornings in the schoolroom with Master John but I’d often see them in the afternoon, rambling about the estate with specimens they had picked up: odd plants, and jars of muddy water from the lake with things swimming about in it. I had a terrible shock one morning when I was cleaning Miss Harriet’s room. There was a cloth spread over her table and underneath lay the body of a hare, one eye taken out and the skin pinned back so you could see the flesh and guts underneath. I put the cloth back pretty quick, I can tell you, and hung my head out of the window for a breath of fresh air.

‘Whatever are you doing to that poor animal?’ I asked Miss Harriet that evening when I brought in her water for washing.

‘Studying its anatomy,’ she replied. ‘Don’t worry, it was dead anyway - one of the dogs had caught it. We’re only putting the body to good use.’

‘If you say so, Miss.’ It didn’t seem such a very good use to me. ‘Well, perhaps you could keep the nasty-looking thing in the schoolroom. I should think it will give you nightmares.’

‘But John doesn’t like to see it,’ she said. (And who could blame the boy!) Then before I could say any more, she quickly changed the subject. ‘Polly, you were quite right: there is nothing Miss Habershon doesn’t know. Even mathematics and science. I cannot tell you how much more interesting those subjects are than French verbs - and to think I might never have found out if I hadn’t tried to climb down the wall.’

Of course I was glad to see Harriet so happily occupied, but as the days went by I began to miss her friendship. She was too busy with books and experiments and such things to spend much time chatting or going for walks. I felt as though she were leaving me behind - silly, I know, since her life was always bound to take a different path from mine. But I couldn’t help becoming rather downhearted, which was not like me at all. Up one minute and down the next; I could not help wondering when my life would get back on an even keel. In the park, the leaves on the horse chestnut trees turned to gold, and blackberries were ripening on the briars which clutched at my skirt as I walked alone in the woods. The swallows knew that summer was over: they had already left the reed beds to start their long journey south. Autumn was coming, with the frosty breath of winter close on its heels. Soon I would be shivering up in the attic and out on the front step at dawn while the wind whipped around my ankles; my feet would be swollen with chilblains, my fingernails black with coal dust and my hands cracked and sore.

Oh, I was in a sad and sorry mood, all right. And then one day I looked out of an upstairs window to see the afternoon sun slanting across the park, and the deer grazing quietly under the trees, and managed to remember how lucky I was. To live and work in such a place! I had no business complaining about a speck of cold. From the moment I decided to take myself in hand, everything seemed to become easier. A new maid came to replace Jemima, and since she was nearer my age, we made a pair together (Jane moving up to work with Becky). She was a Welsh girl called Megan, with a smooth freckled face like a brown hen’s egg and a sing-song voice that was hard to understand at first. Being a practical, happy soul, she was just the tonic I needed. We also needed the extra pair of hands: the family were shortly due back from Scotland, and the first shooting party was to be held at the beginning of October.

Miss Brookfield was still in England so she had been invited, I was pleased to hear, along with various other smart guests - although not the Prince of Wales (despite Jemima’s prediction), which was a relief to Mrs Bragg but a disappointment for the rest of us.

‘Did you miss me?’ William teased, the first time we met again over the coal scuttle. I would not give him the satisfaction of knowing how much. It worried me, how much I had found myself thinking about him when he wasn’t there and counting the days until he came back. He would probably be moving on before long: no doubt a job would come up that was better paid or more to his liking in some other way, and I would lose another friend. It was safer not to become too attached to anyone, I decided - and especially not to a person like William, who was kind and helpful to everyone and didn’t mean anything by it. Megan was very taken with him after he’d carried her trunk upstairs, but I don’t think he did that because he liked her in particular. At least I hoped not. But there again, he was free to like whoever he wanted; it had nothing to do with me.

A couple of days later, we heard news of another departure that came as a surprise to me, and not a welcome one at that. ‘So the new governess is to leave at the end of the month,’ Mary told us at tea time. ‘Shame, I thought this one would have lasted a little longer - she hasn’t even been here a year. And Miss Harriet seems to like her well enough, which makes a change.’

I had talked to Miss Habershon only a couple of days before about her plan to take Harriet to the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace; she hadn’t mentioned anything being wrong then. Just when things were going so well for the two of them! It was as though Lady Vye were determined that Harriet should be unhappy for one reason or another. ‘Why does Miss Habershon have to go?’ I asked, but nobody had any idea.

‘Because my stepmother came into the schoolroom yesterday and saw what we were studying,’ Harriet told me that night, white with anger. ‘She says chemistry is an unsuitable subject for a girl. First Nanny Roberts and now Miss Habershon. I hate her, Polly. I wish she were dead!’

‘Don’t you ever say such a dreadful thing.’ Of course Harriet was upset, but that kind of remark didn’t help anyone. ‘Maybe she’ll change her mind if you explain how you feel. Or maybe she’ll let Miss Habershon stay if you take up French and piano again. That would be better than nothing, wouldn’t it?’

‘You don’t understand! I’m going to be a doctor, so I have to carry on studying sciences.’

‘You can’t be a doctor, Miss,’ I said, trying not to smile. Wherever had she got that extraordinary idea from? ‘Leave that sort of thing to the gentlemen.’

‘There’s a medical college in London just for women,’ Harriet said impatiently. ‘Miss Habershon told me all about it. I mean to go there when I am eighteen, and I shall, one way or another. It’s the only thing I have ever truly wanted to do.’

‘And you have said as much to Her Ladyship, I suppose?’

Harriet nodded. Well, that explained it: no wonder Lady Vye wanted Miss Habershon out of the door and quick about it too. Fancy planting such a peculiar notion in Harriet’s head! ‘How could a young lady like you ever treat someone who was sick or injured?’ I asked her. ‘What if it was some great strapping fellow who’d broken his leg, or caught some horrible disease like smallpox - or worse?’ Really, it didn’t bear thinking about.

‘But I want to look after women,’ Harriet told me, her eyes all lit up. ‘Women like my mother who die having babies, or die trying not to have them. There are such dreadful things going on, Polly! You should hear what Miss Habershon has to say about the backstreets of London. Don’t you think women in those sorts of difficulties might prefer to see a lady doctor?’

I could not think past the words ‘lady doctor’, they sounded so strange to my ears. Harriet had certainly surprised me: she knew more about the world than I would ever have imagined. Her next remark made my jaw drop. ‘What about Iris, for instance?’ she said. ‘I know she was dismissed, and I have an idea why. You would like to think that somebody kind and gentle was there to help her, wouldn’t you? Somebody who did not think she was a wicked creature who ought to be punished?’

Of course I would, though I could not bring myself to say so. I didn’t want to talk about Iris with Miss Harriet somehow. It was hard to think past the fact that Harriet was a Vye; between them, the Vyes had chewed Iris up and spat her out. They might very well have known who was the father of her baby, but they didn’t care what happened to her or the child.

‘Have you heard from Iris?’ Miss Harriet asked me. ‘I keep wondering how she is.’

I’d been unfair to her and felt ashamed; Harriet was a better person than that. She had no more power to help Iris than I did, however, and there was not much I could do to help Harriet either.

‘Just hold your fire for a couple of days,’ I said. ‘You’ll have a better chance of convincing Her Ladyship when the guests have gone and things have quietened down.’

Eleven

Good mistresses take an interest in the welfare and well-being of their servants; and thus gain an influence over them for good; but this is a very different thing to encouraging them in idle gossip, as a servant once permitted to become a narrator too often draws the long bow, and fact is lost in fiction.

From
The Duties of Servants: A Practical Guide to the Routine of Domestic Service
, 1894

‘Do you know, Polly, I really cannot bear the thought of another afternoon’s shooting. Would it be considered very bad form if I came back to the house straight after lunch?’

Miss Brookfield’s lovely face appealed to me from the mirror while I put up her hair. (She’d particularly asked for me as her maid again, which pleased me a great deal.) ‘I’m sure no one would mind, Miss,’ I said. ‘You could always say you had to keep your mother company.’

‘Anything would be better than hanging about in the cold, staring up at the sky with that dreadful noise dinning on in one’s head,’ she sighed. ‘How can Edward pretend to enjoy it so much?’

Things between herself and Master Edward seemed to be progressing very nicely, we were all glad to see. William told me that they had spent a lot of time together in London and then up in Scotland, visiting castles and walking over the moors. Master Rory had been called back to serve with his company by then which gave Edward a clear run at the field, so to speak, although now Rory was back at Swallowcliffe for the weekend. The Brookfields would be here for a week before setting off on a tour of Italy; we maids were secretly hoping that Edward would propose to Miss Brookfield before they left. William had happened to notice that an envelope addressed to Miss Brookfield’s father in America, in Master Edward’s handwriting, had been left out for Mr Goddard to post. It was awkward that her family should be so far away. How long would a reply take to come?

I wondered whether Miss Brookfield knew about the letter. Of course I couldn’t raise the matter with her, even though we had talked about all sorts of things together, so I bit my tongue and concentrated on her hair. ‘There! I hope that will not come undone.’

She put a hand up to the back of her head to check. ‘I shouldn’t think so. Lord, any more pins and I shall turn into a porcupine! So, how do I look?’

‘Perfect,’ I said, and not a word of a lie. She was wearing a slim tweed skirt and fitted jacket in the softest shade of heather, with a fox fur to throw around her shoulders - quite the English country lady.

She walked over to the fire and stood in front of it for a few minutes, warming her hands as she gazed into the flames. ‘Oh, don’t listen to me grumble! It is so lovely to be back at Swallowcliffe again. If it wasn’t for the fact that we shall be seeing Florence, and Venice, and Rome, I could hardly bear to leave. Still, at least we shall be coming back here for Christmas, so it is not to be goodbye for ever just yet.’

‘I’m very glad to hear it.’ Perhaps Master Edward would wait until then to ask for Miss Brookfield’s hand. He had better not leave it too long, though, or somebody else would snap her up.

‘I shall bring you back a souvenir - some Venetian glass, perhaps. Now, pass me my hat and I am ready for the fray. There, that will have to do. Until this afternoon, then, Polly!’

This was the pattern of a day’s shooting at Swallowcliffe: the gentlemen and whichever ladies were interested (usually only Lady Vye and Mrs Trevelyan, a large widow lady who farmed near by) went off in the brake around ten o’clock for a couple of drives, to get their eye in. The rest of the ladies joined the party for an early luncheon somewhere in the woods at noon. It was never much of a meal, Lord Vye being keen to continue with the sport: just soup, bread and cheese for the beaters and gun loaders, and baked potatoes with Irish stew or some such for the ladies and gentlemen. Then off they went shooting again until the light began to fail, although most of the ladies would have trickled back to the house well before then and would be playing cards or writing letters by the fire.

It was a glorious day, that Saturday: bright and crisp, the sun shining down out of a clear blue sky and the ground thick with a rustling carpet of golden-brown leaves. Miss Brookfield and Master Rory came back together from the shooting after lunch, and I helped her change into a riding habit. She said the afternoon was far too good to waste sitting inside and they were going out for a gallop. I didn’t like the sound of that at all. Master Rory appeared to the very best advantage, sitting on a horse; even I had to admit that he looked particularly fine in the saddle. Miss Brookfield seemed particularly radiant, I noticed - as though she were lit up from inside by some secret glow of happiness. I had seen that look before. It had been on Iris’s face as she went off to the ball, and I hoped to goodness that Master Edward was the cause of it this time, not his brother.