The Wet Nurse's Tale (6 page)

We met again, Master Freddie and I, late at night in the pantry and quite often. It seems strange to me now that I didn’t worry myself with my sinning, but the flattery of it turned my head and ruined me and that’s as near the truth as I can get to. My life had been spent with pretty sisters and brothers too, as far as that goes. It’s not as if I was in the practice of mirror-gazing, and certainly I know that pride goeth before a fall, but I’m not a stupid girl and I can see what’s before my nose. There was Ada’s profile, as clear and lovely as if she was born fine and there was mine, like it somewhat, only as if one hundred wasps had stung me and lumped me up. There was Ellen’s hair, as black and smooth as the satin my master wraps his favorite guns in, and there’s mine, as black as hers but coarse enough to stay the brush every time. Even Mary’s face, most like mine for its wideness, is pleasing to look at for the way everything fits while mine, oh, well, mine isn’t quite.

I’m not complaining, mind you. I know I’m a lucky girl in my own way. My eyes are as blue as a spring sky which I know for I have been told it many a time, even by my father which is where I got ’em. And my mother tells me still that though I might not be the fairest, there’s somewhat about me that draws the eye and I kissed her to hear it, but then again, she’s my mother ain’t she, and loves me. And I daresay I have a certain knowing look to my face, like I understand what a person’s thinking, because I do, often, and I know that look can be appealing to some as like to see that in a girl. I have caught a glance or two from a man, to be sure, but not so many as I couldn’t count them on my hands. Mostly though, men like a sweet complexion and a downward glance and a slim waist and those I do not have, nor never will.

Indeed, I’m just trying to explain how it is that it was possible for me, always the smartest of us girls no matter how you cut the cake, to let herself get carried away and forget the future like I did. Twas simply the relief of it, you see, that someone would choose me. I felt somewhat like a queen, though if I had knowed then what it is would happen to me, I would have quick shaked off the crown and got back to work.

But I mustn’t forget the truth of that matter and that’s that Master Freddie is not a bad man. He took advantage, yes he did. And he was wrong to do it. If I’m to be honest though, I must confess the whole of it and that’s that I let him, didn’t I. I could tell: he wasn’t the sort to press himself, the way his bastard father would do. I did as much of the choosing as he, is what I think. He chose me because I seemed likely. I accepted him because he seemed to need comfort and I have a big heart to go along with the rest of myself. And to be as honest as I ought to be, I must admit that I accepted him because I needed a bit of comforting myself.

As the summer waned, the master’s hunting parties became more and more frequent and we were all of us run ragged. We often heard the master bellowing to my lady about the expense of all us servants, but it was the guests that required the extra help, is what we knew and what I suppose he finally caught on to. And it wasn’t just the guests themselves, but their people too, their maids and their men and their grooms and whatnot. It meant that the cook needed extra help and the laundry too, but us sculleries were never thought of and we had all our extra work and more. Mary and the cook’s other girls never rested from packing lunches and tending to guests, their special requests for coffee, not tea, or tea, not coffee, or for a hotter fire or for an apple before bedtime. Mrs. Hart kept us running, all the time, Letty and Sara and me and the others, what with the extra grates and boots to be scraped and chamber pots to be rinsed and Lord knows what else. The list of chores would take the day to say. I came to admire Mrs. Hart, not for her kindness to us that’s sure, for she wasn’t, but rather for her remembering, which was truly a wonder. I even told her as much.

“Why, Mrs. Hart,” said I when she came to check on how we were coming with the reblacking of the dining hall grates, “Sir James’s man marveled just this morning how you remembered that the old gentleman likes his toast very nearly burnt. He said there is no one like you at any other hall.”

“And to be sure,” put in Letty, “it’s likely that he knows how every other hall’ll treat a guest, don’t he, as much as he seems to be never at his own home too much, from what I hear.”

“That’s enough, Letty,” said Mrs. Hart. “If you didn’t become so familiar quite so quickly with our visitors and their servants, you’d have less information about that that’s none of your business.” And that shut Letty up. But she thrust me over a pleased look which is all I’d wanted anyhow and sure enough, the very next week I was promoted up from scullery to maid, though when she told me so, she said, “And, Susan, do try to keep your apron clean or at least change it when it’s soiled.”

I’d been doing maid work anyhow, in addition to the scullery chores, except now it just meant I could get away from the grates. It was a lovely new life. I slept an extra quarter of an hour and I wasn’t all a’sweated by six in the morning from the scraping and blacking. I’m a girl that always will put my elbow into any of my chores and I’m proud of it, but it meant that as a scullery, my nose was smudged, my apron, my hands, all of me, smudged. But as a maid: well, I might find myself in the mix with some polish or some dust, but no grates. I worked just as hard as ever I had at my cleaning, but oh, with no more grates I felt as if I could sing. And to be sure, I even had the tiniest ruffle on my cap now! No one could knock me from my cloud, not even my father, who said, on my afternoon home, that if he had riches, he’d rather see me in the laundry or such, and put a pretty girl up to be the maid. And my brothers laughed though my mother did not, but then we all thought of Ellen at once, and even my father, already in his cups, fell quiet with the memories.

The only sore spot for me was that there wasn’t no one I could share my joy with and by that I suppose I mean a man. I saw how Letty led them on. I don’t suppose she ever talked about anything of consequence with any of them, not the grooms nor Thomas, the handsome underbutler with green eyes, nor the brewer nor any one of them. And I wondered often enough if my father had ever had a civil word for my mother. I recalled to myself though I hated to do it, how Ned Loft broke my poor Ellen’s heart after she was already so harmed and after he’d promised to love her forever. All my life I’d seen lovers fighting with words and fists and still I wanted some for myself. I wanted to tell someone about my rise in station and have them give me a squeeze and say, “That’s the way, Susan. We’ll save together and soon enough, we’ll have a nest egg. Now, give us a kiss,” but no one did.

Master Freddie, of course, wasn’t someone for me to love. He was born too high, of course, and also, though he and I met in the pantry once a week or so, I didn’t think of him as a man. No, I don’t mean that as harsh as it sounds. He was kind enough, and to be as truthful as I can be, I even derived some shameful pleasure from our act, but what I mean is that I thought of him as my master and needful. And that was like no man I wanted. I craved a man bigger than me, someone like Miles the smithy, whose arms were as big around as posts.

When I met Master Freddie in the pantry, it was because he’d come downstairs to ask the cook for a bit of cheese or a piece of pie or some such, and I learned that that meant he wanted more than just a morsel of something to eat and that if I should choose to find myself in the pantry later, I wouldn’t be alone. It pleased me to think that he wanted me. That’s what kept me awake when I should’ve been asleep. And that’s what kept me going back when I was quite sure that if I didn’t, no harm would ever have come to me from any unwillingness. I wasn’t unwilling. I was sinful and lustful and also, though it makes me blush to say it for it’s so pathetic, I felt pleased by his attentions.

Attentions, really, is a big word. We had little talk to our adventures, to be sure. We’d meet, we’d kiss but just a bit, and soon I’d be on my back. He was kind, as I’ve said, but we both knew our places in our arrangement, and for that, words weren’t necessary, not really. I could sense that it saddened the young master a bit, that we hadn’t more than we did, but there was naught I could do for him. I’m not learned enough to make a pleasant conversation, and besides, what could I have told him that would have been of interest to him? The art of black-leading a grate?

I don’t mean to say, not for an instant, that he could have loved me. I mean only that I believed he missed the sort of tenderness that I did not feel for him and that I did not care to receive from him. I did not miss it. I knew it would never grow between us and so I did not yearn for it. I did not grow to love him, ever, though it seems clear that many maids in my particular position, and by that I mean on their back in the pantry, would have grown to love their masters. I knew better. As I’ve said, I have the gift of foresight, but even without it, I’d have known that Freddie wasn’t the one for me. Once only, did Master Freddie talk to me in the way that lovers talk. The moment felt horrible to me, but I shall repeat it here.

After we had done, on that particular night, he lay on his back for a moment longer than was usual while I was pinning my bodice back together. It’s worth a note, I suppose, to say that I met him in my maid’s frock, while he came to me in his nightgown. A servant cannot be casual the way a master can, not even in that circumstance.

At any rate, he spoke suddenly. “It seems I’m to be married,” he said.

I looked at him in surprise, at his saying such a thing to me, but it seems that he thought that I reacted to the words he spoke rather than that he did at all.

“Yes,” he said, “my mother’s great friend has a daughter. Maude is her name, and she and I have been slated for each other since we were tiny. It is both our mothers’ fondest wish.”

I did not know what to say. I did not know what he might have wished me to say. He was looking into my face and so I smiled a bit and continued to tie my strings.

“She’s . . . that is, Miss Maude is . . .” Master Freddie seemed to stammer, “Pretty.”

I felt embarrassed for him, that he would tell me such a thing. It was no business of mine. Miss Maude’s station was high and mine low, especially now that I’d fallen, and he should have known better than to speak her name to a maid in his house. It was wrong of him and it made me angry with him that he knew no better. And I felt angry for another reason. It put the image of the two of us, Miss Maude and Susan Rose, standing next to each other, into my head. It made an awful picture and I wished it away as soon as it came to me.

“I do hope she’s a person of some sensibility,” said Master Freddie almost to himself. “I do hope we can talk to each other.”

It did not seem to occur to him that I stood there, still smelling of his seed, still tying my strings. But I realized again then, as now, that he’d have just as soon had a friend to have tea with as have had a lass like me to lie with. I’m not saying that Master Freddie cared more for boys than girls the way some of the high folk did; what I’m pointing to instead is the fact that he just wanted a bit of human companionship, and if it had to come from a housemaid, well then, I say he was lucky to have me to give it.

I sometimes wondered about Miss Maude, how pretty she was and how much she’d be able to care for Master Freddie, but as it wasn’t my concern, I didn’t dwell on it. I turned to my new work with a great deal of vigor and won the approval of Mrs. Hart more than once or twice. The young master and I still met on occasion, and thus it was that as the summer waned and the family began to talk about their sojourn to London, I found that the smell of coffee made my stomach turn and that I no longer needed the rags that I’d used every month since I was thirteen. You will not be surprised, dear Reader, to learn that I found myself with child.

LADY PRUTHY’S REASON

OCTOBER 23, 1836

LONDON

My Dearest Sophie,

I write to you with good news. James has finally been offered a position at the House of Lords. He shall visit there tomorrow in order to fully understand his duties, but I daresay they shall never be as arduous as those he has fulfilled these past years as undersecretary to . . . well you know about whom I speak and I dare not write it. It has been a trying time for him but he has kept his dignity about him at all times and I have been extremely proud of him.