Listen to the Moon (15 page)

They had all left for the morning service too early to clear the breakfast things; he went to the dining room to make sure that Molly had since done so.

She was rolling up the hearthrug, presumably to take it outside to shake it out. A task Thea ought to have performed that morning.

“Molly?”

She threw him an apprehensive glance before standing, the rolled rug under one arm, and attempting to look blank. A piece of folded paper poked out of the neckline of her gown. On drawing closer, John recognized his own handwriting. A terrible suspicion seized him, a hundred small indications from the last week, overlooked at the time.

“What is that paper?”

“It’s the list of chores you gave me, sir.” She stood as tall as she could, which wasn’t very.

“May I see it?”

There was no way to refuse. She handed it over with a defiant look. Unfolding it confirmed his worst fears. “This appears to be the list I gave Thea.” Thea had copied it out again on the back in block print, so Molly could read it.

She frowned. “Is it? We must’ve got them swapped.”

John felt very tired. So, no doubt, did she, attempting every day to accomplish two full days of work. On very little sleep, if his suspicions were correct. Had she taken Thea’s tasks in trade for answering the bell at night? It was an uneven bargain, if she had; and Molly had been at him to lighten Thea’s work from the moment he’d written the lists.

“You’re a good friend, Molly. But one day you will learn that you do others no favors in doing their work for them, instead of encouraging them to do it themselves.”

Her eyes narrowed, and he remembered that she had spent Boxing Day aiding a sick friend with her washing. “I’m just helping Thea out for half an hour,” she insisted stalwartly. “Mrs. Khaleel sent her into town for some onions.”

There was nowhere to buy onions in town that would be open on Sunday, and the hearthrugs were meant to be shaken out in the early morning, when Thea had decidedly not been on an errand. This could not continue.

Mr. Summers was presently at the church, leading the afternoon service. “Thea,” John called, loud enough to be heard all through the house. Thea did not appear. “Dorothea Maddocks, where are you?”

He went through every room, opening cupboards and chests, and found her scrambling out from under the bed in one of the guest bedrooms. It was at least a credit to his staff’s work that she was not sneezing or covered in cobwebs. “Thea, I found this in Molly’s possession.” He showed her her list.

She gave him a panicky glance and said nothing.

“I know you are very young,” he said gently. “You are evidently in some distress as well. But that is no excuse for allowing others to do your work for you. Poor Molly has been run off her feet.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the other servants gathering in the doorway. He went to shut the door, and then reflected that perhaps privacy would not reassure Thea in the way he hoped. “Mrs. Toogood, kindly attend me.”

Sukey stepped reluctantly into the room. “Go back to your duties,” he told the others. “I do not suppose you would like everyone gawking at
you
.” He shut the door, under no illusions that they would not still be there when he opened it again.

“Thea,” he said, “if there is anything you would like to say in your own defense, I would be glad to hear it.”

She shook her head hopelessly.

“I was your age once, you know. I might understand.”

She snorted.

He didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t sink and vanish into her lethargy like a pebble dropped in a pond. “There have been plenty of times when I have not wished to do my work. But you and I were born into a station where we either work or starve. Do you wish to starve?”

She sighed noisily.

“Thea?”

“Of course not, sir.”

“Then you must work.”

“Yes, sir.” The dull defiance that often underlay her monosyllabism was more pronounced than usual. She had never even thanked him for the new dress that she wore. He hoped she had thanked Mr. Summers.

“Thea, you cannot collect wages indefinitely without earning them,” he said, more sharply than he meant to. “Do you understand that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then from now on, Molly will go on errands and you will stay here where I can keep an eye on you.” He looked at Sukey, relieved to find that her face mirrored his own frustrated incomprehension. Without that, he couldn’t have said, “And if I find you hiding in a cupboard or under a bed again, I shall be obliged to bring the matter to Mr. Summers’s attention.”

Her face twisted resentfully. “I can’t help it,” she said hotly, tears brimming in her eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“N-nothing. Never mind.”

“You
can
help it.” If he could not make her see, she would be turned off by Epiphany. “You must try harder. Self-command is never easy, but it is always possible.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Then explain—”

The door burst open and Molly barreled in. “You beast,” she said furiously to John. “You
beast
. Can’t you leave her alone? I don’t mind a spot of extra work. Just until she’s feeling better.” She put her arms round the crying girl, who clung trustingly to her in a manner both touching and maddening.

“She will never feel better if you all coddle her like this. The only cure for malaise is exertion.” He realized the next moment that he ought to have objected to her tone instead of deigning to quarrel with her.

Molly curled a hand around the girl’s head. “You’ve assigned her too much work with your bloody lists. You’ve given us all more work than there are hours in the day. We know how to do our jobs, but no, you think—”

Sukey came forward and tugged at her arm. “We’ll all be calmer later. Let’s—”

She was right. John was not calm in the least. “Good Christ,” he said in disbelief, “what is wrong with all of you? I told you to give it a month. A month! You will be used to it soon, and do it faster than you can at present imagine. But no, you are all so damned lazy—”

“John,” Sukey said in as quietly reasonable a tone as one could manage through gritted teeth. “No one is lazy.”

Why did she always take their part against him? He was no tyrant. He was the opposite. His father would have told Thea to get her things and go after that first nap in the cupboard, no matter what the girl had undergone.

He turned on her. “Oh no? Then
why
, after a fortnight of being constantly reminded, do you still never look at anything in the light after cleaning it? The number of dishes I have had to polish streaks off does not bear thinking on.”

She glared at him. “I’m trying. I’ve never cleaned such fine china before.”

“There is lack of expertise and then there is lack of common sense. How much experience do you imagine one needs in order to open a shutter and tilt one’s head to catch the light?”

“No one has ever complained of my work before,” she said passionately.

It was low, he knew it was low—but he raised one eyebrow and let the silence stretch.
Haven’t they?
Her face flushed bright, bright red, and her mouth trembled.

“Stop feeding her carp-pie.” Molly’s voice shook. “It’s low, to be nasty to your own wife.”

John flushed with shame.

Sukey forcibly shoved the two girls out the door, as if afraid of what John would do. “We’ll talk later, when we’re all calmer,” she said, not looking him in the eye, and shut the door.

There was nothing pressing requiring John’s attention. He would occupy himself for a few hours in repairing Mr. Summers’s neglected wardrobe, and perhaps by evening he would have decided how to proceed. He strode to Mr. Summers’s room, jerked open the wardrobe, and began laying out coats and pantaloons with shaking hands.

Chapter Ten

Thea headed for the laundry, sniffling and wiping her streaming eyes and nose on her sleeve. Sukey and Molly followed, but she said, “You shouldn’t help me anymore. You’ll get me in trouble with Mr. Toogood.”

Sukey thought this was the most sensible thing she’d ever heard the girl say, but Molly stopped as if she’d been shot. “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”

“I
told
you to leave me alone. No one ever listens.” Thea stamped off to the laundry and began sloshing water about.

“John’s just trying to keep her from getting the sack,” Sukey said.

“So was I!”

“Then you’re on the same side, aren’t you?”

Molly went still, surprised. And then, to Sukey’s shock, her face trembled and tears brimmed in her eyes.

“What’s the matter? What did I say?”

Taking her by the arm, Molly dragged her through the kitchen past poor Mrs. Khaleel, who must be dying to know what had gone on upstairs but couldn’t leave her kettles and roasts, and shut the pantry door behind them. “If I tell you something, do you promise not to tell your husband?”

Sukey bit her lip. First Mrs. Khaleel, and now this? But she was deadly curious, and after all, if Molly were stealing, she could break the promise with a clear conscience. She nodded.

“It’s my fault Mr. Perkins touched Thea,” Molly whispered, her face crumpling further.

“How could it be your fault?”

Molly’s voice sank still lower. “I—I’m so ashamed. I
did things
for him. I touched him.”

Sukey’s eyes widened. “You mean you liked him?”

Molly shook her head as if to shake off the very idea. “I’m still a virgin,” she said fiercely. “I can still get married. I—he told me if I didn’t do it, he’d make Thea do it instead. But he was putting his hands on Thea anyway. I should have gone to Mr. Summers. I should have told, and instead I committed awful sins, I let him live here—I didn’t
know
he was at her. I swear I didn’t know.” She rubbed her hands on her apron. “I can still smell him on my hands.”

Sukey had no idea what to say. “You did it to protect Thea. You meant well.”

A tear slipped down Molly’s cheek. “I wanted a house key. He gave me one. I’m a monster.” She hid her face in her hands.

Sukey wished very hard that someone else, who knew what to say, were here instead. But for some reason, Molly was talking to her. She put a hesitant hand on the girl’s shoulder. “Why did you want a key? Are you meeting a boy?”

Molly gave a strangled laugh. “Meeting a boy? You think I’m sneaking out to have
fun
? Sarah has consumption.” She bit her lip, hard, and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “She has consumption and she can’t work in the cold and wet. She’ll starve if I don’t help her. I’m so tired. I just want—I’m so tired.”

How many people’s work was Molly
doing
? Sukey put an arm around her. “You can’t carry the whole world on your shoulders. You’re not tall enough.”

“Thea hates me.”

Sukey thought of last week, when she’d wanted to ask John if he still liked her, and then realized he wanted to ask her the same thing. “Have you talked to her about what happened?”

“I can’t. She must hate me. I can’t.”

“You should talk to her.” Sukey squeezed her shoulder. “Better to know for sure, one way or the other. But I don’t think she hates you.”

Molly drew in a deep breath. “You promised not to tell your husband.”

Sukey felt cold. She’d learned why Molly was sneaking out—not to get herself pregnant—and she couldn’t tell him. He’d be furious if he knew she knew, and he was so worried. “I won’t. But he’d understand. He understands thinking he has to do everything himself.”

Molly’s eyebrows drew together. “I do have to help Sarah. I’m not following her around telling her the china is streaky. I’m helping her.”

Privately, Sukey thought Molly’s friends would never get off the teat if Molly didn’t pop them off, but she didn’t say so. She didn’t say,
At this rate, maybe you’ll get yourself sacked and you can help Sarah all day every day.
She didn’t say that helping Thea hadn’t worked out so well. It seemed like kicking Molly when she was down.

Besides, she felt ashamed.
She
would never go without sleep to do extra washing or risk her job or touch someone she disliked to help
anybody
. She was self-serving, when you got down to it. Cold, maybe. She looked out for herself, and wished other people would do the same.

* * *

She spent the rest of that long, awful day following her neatly written list.

One o’clock p.m. Staff dines in the kitchen.
John appeared, looking tired. Thea did not. John went and fetched her, and they all ate in silence.

Half past one. Needlework.
Sukey was hemming a new drugget to protect the carpet under the dining room table. The wool had been embroidered by one of Mr. Summers’s married daughters.

Embroidery—thinking of pretty things and creating them—was for ladies, and hemming was for Sukey. She’d no desire to trade places; you could hem and think of something else.

Unfortunately, today she mostly thought about that nasty look on John’s face, saying clear as words,
We both know you’ve got the sack a few times, because you’re a lazy slattern.

Half the time she shook with indignation, and half the time she wanted to cry. He’d been so kind about Mrs. Humphrey. He’d trusted her to do him proud at the vicarage, and she’d tried. She really had. But she didn’t know how to do anything
properly
,
and he didn’t see the trying, only the failing. Usually she and Molly chatted a bit, or sang while they stitched. But today Molly didn’t say a word as she darned the household’s stockings.

Half past four p.m. Verify that fire has been lit and dressing room prepared for Mr. Summers to change for dinner.
Help Mrs. Khaleel in the kitchen. Put plates in warmer by the oven. Remember, dinner must be served HOT.

“Hot” was in block letters, underlined twice.

I’m not an idiot
, she grumbled to herself.
I don’t go about thinking dinner would be better cold.

Mr. Summers was dining out anyway. The staff ate a silent tea together in the kitchen at six. “Mr. Summers will return late,” John said. “After nine o’clock, when you have prepared his rooms for the night and put everything in readiness for tomorrow, you may all go to bed early if you like.”

Sukey carried her workbox into the butler’s pantry for the evening, along with a branch of candles and a stack of Mr. Summers’s clothes, on which John had marked tiny tears and frays by pinning scraps of old linen to the fabric.

At nine o’clock she rolled out their pallet and changed into her night things. The house was silent, except for someone pouring water in the kitchen. John, refreshing Mr. Summers’s pitcher so that whenever he chose to come home, his wash water’d be neither too cold nor too hot.

Sometimes it felt like all the care he’d given her when they met—Mr. Summers got it now. She hated it. But it was pitiful, too.

John wouldn’t agree. He’d say,
It’s a quiet time to read, waiting up for Mr. Summers.
But she knew if she went upstairs, he’d not be reading. She’d see him fussing with Mr. Summers’s nightshirt and banyan and slippers and nightcap: Were they warm? Were they hanging too near the fire? Were the coals in the warming pan still hot, and should it be moved to another part of the bed?

Hours of work for a half-second less of chill, and would Mr. Summers even notice the difference? And John had worn himself out, nothing left for his wife.

She wrapped the pelisse he’d bought her around her nightgown and went into the kitchen.

He turned at the sound of her footsteps. “Mrs. Toogood.”

“Mr. Toogood.”

They stood looking at each other a while.

“I’m glad you came in,” he said slowly. “I wish to apologize for earlier. Molly was right. I was low, and nasty.”

She hadn’t expected that. “Then you didn’t mean it, about my lacking common sense? About my never looking at things in the light?”

He frowned, annoyed again. “I don’t think you lack for common sense at all. That’s why I can’t understand… But that isn’t what I wanted to say. Thank you for stopping the argument. I should not have lost my temper with you or with Molly. It was undignified, but worse, it was unkind. Especially to you. I have already spoken with her, but I wished to… I thought you might like an evening to yourself.”

She blinked. He’d been fretting over this all day too? It broke her heart all at once, the endless pains he took. The way he’d written
HOT
like that, and underlined it. The way he’d probably spent hours thinking of the right words to describe his behavior:
Undignified, unkind, which is worse?
She hid a smile. Maybe Mr. Summers didn’t get all of it, after all. “You
were
low and nasty. Don’t forget it.”

He nodded.

“But you were right,” she admitted reluctantly. “I’m used to being maid-of-all-work in a boarding house for eight women, where there’s never time in the day to do everything I need to do. So I learned to do things halfway. Good enough. I know that it isn’t
really
good enough. Not for you.”

He sighed and sat at the kitchen table, pressing his forehead into his fists. “I don’t want to be like my father. Do you know what the servants used to say at Tassell Hall?”

She shook her head.

“Not ‘The room looks well’ or ‘Dinner is excellent’. It was always ‘It’s
too
good’. And they smirked when they said it. Because they meant it was done to my father’s standards, and it wasn’t a compliment to him. But I— It itches at me when something is askew, or spotty, or dusty. It itches and nags until I have to speak.”

“Your father isn’t going to inspect your work here.”

He waved a hand impatiently. “That isn’t it. I’m
like
him. I inherited his fussiness, and I don’t know how to stop it. I hate it when things aren’t done properly.”

She pulled out a chair and sat opposite him, tucking her chilly hands into her armpits. “Everyone in this house wants things to be done properly.”

He sighed. “Except Thea.”

“Except Thea,” she agreed. “We’ll protect her until she gets back on her feet. We will.”

“But
ought
we to? What if by shielding her from consequences, we’re preventing her from improving? And don’t we have a responsibility to Mr. Summers, not to allow him to be imposed upon?”

“I don’t pretend to understand her.” Part of her still wanted to give Thea a good slap. “But…”

My mum would beat me black-and-blue if I got myself in trouble like that,
Sukey’d said once about Mrs. Dymond’s poor pregnant sister. But when she’d met a man who tempted her, Sukey hadn’t been any better than she should be, herself.

Mrs. Grimes would beat her black-and-blue if she slept the day away in self-pity too. But Sukey had never been in Thea’s place, and she wanted to be her mother about as much as John wanted to be his father. Just because they’d never received much toleration didn’t mean they couldn’t give it. “Mr. Summers also has a responsibility to her. She was insulted and abused under his roof, by a man he put over her. It wouldn’t be very Christian to turn her off for being unhappy about it. We’d have to make him see that.”

He let out a breath. “Yes. You’re right. He would see that. Eventually.”

“Everyone wants to do things properly,” she said again. “It isn’t the carp-pie we mind. It’s being made to feel small. We’re all of us working hard, doing the best we know how, and you don’t seem to know it. You never notice what’s done well, only what isn’t.”

He nodded.

“Do you remember the raisins? You said it was false economy.”

He licked his lip. “It was.”

“Hoarding praise is false economy as well. And I told myself I didn’t want to live where everything was weighed and doled out, that I wanted to be where people were generous with each other.”

His lips parted as if he wanted to speak, but she hurried on, wanting to get it all out before she lost her nerve. Wanting him to hear her in this brief space where she seemed to believe she deserved it. “I thought you’d give me that, but lately it seems as if the only time you think I’m good for anything is when we’re—when I’m spreading my legs for you.”

Even now, saying it, she wanted to do it. Her cunt ached just looking at him, so handsome and strong, and he’d make her feel safe and happy and as if he worshipped her. As if he was glad to have married her.
I didn’t want an evening to myself
, she could say, and wrap her arms around his neck, and he’d…

He got out of his chair and came to kneel by hers. “I know you work hard. Do you want to know something I admire very much about you?”

She nodded.

“At Mrs. Pengilly’s, you hurried in the kitchen, but you polished her silver with great care. And here, those porcelain figurines—you pay attention to what your employers love most, and you make it shine for them. It’s one of the kindest things I’ve ever seen.”

She blinked. “Truly?” He didn’t think her a lazy good-for-naught after all?

He tugged her hand from her armpit and kissed her knuckles. Then he pulled off her wedding ring and wiped it with his handkerchief, so his spit wouldn’t tarnish it. “I should have said so before. I’m sorry.” He slipped the ring back on as if…as if he worshipped her.

She blinked back unexpected tears. He didn’t own anything to polish, but on a sudden she wanted to make the
world
shine for him. She felt almost as if she could. Or—as if she could help him see that the world
was
shining already, despite the smudges. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” she said cheekily. “Now try that on the girls.”

* * *

As he went about his work over the next days, John tried to look for things to praise in others. It was difficult. His eyes always went first to the scratch, the uneven wax patina, the faint stain left on the marble. His ears caught a dish clinking against the sink, or furniture scratching the floor.