Mr. Jackson looks surprised. “Simon, what are you doing here? Have you been harassing Mrs. Coleman?”
“I don’t know what harassing means, sir, but I ain’t been doing it. I’m just offering to clear off that ivy.”
Mr. Jackson is about to say something but Mrs. C. interrupts. “Thank you, Simon. That would be very kind of you.” And she smiles at me.
No lady’s ever said such a nice thing to me, nor smiled at me. I can’t move, staring at her smile.
“Go, boy. Go,” Mr. Jackson says quietly.
I smile back at her. Then I go.
JANUARY 1905
Jenny Whitby
It were a right nuisance, that was sure. We’d got into a routine, he and I. Everyone was happy-the missus, the girls, him, and me. (I always come last on the list.) I’d take the girls up the hill once a week or so. I’d my bit of fun, they’d theirs, and her ladyship didn’t have to do nothing but sit at home and read.
But then she got it into her head to take them to the cemetery herself. In the summer she started going up there two, three times a week. The girls were in heaven, but me, I were in hell.
Then she stopped, and started sending me again, and I thought: It’s back on. But now it’s winter the girls don’t go so much, and when they do she wants to take them again. Sometimes she even takes them when they ain’t so keen on going. It’s cold there, with all that stone round the place. They have to run to keep warm. Me, I know how to keep warm when I’m there.
Once or twice I’ve convinced the missus that I should go instead of her. Rest of the time I’ve to sneak out of an afternoon. He ain’t there evenings. Gardeners work shorter hours than maids, I like to remind him.
“Yep, an’ we get paid twice as much,” he said. “It’s a dog’s life, innit?”
I asked him what it is with the missus-what she goes to the cemetery so much for.
“Maybe the same reason as you,” he said.
“She never!” I laughed. “Who would she go for, anyhow-a gravedigger?”
“The guvnor, more like,” he said.
I laughed again, but he were serious-said everyone saw ‘em together, talking over in the Dissenters.
“Just talking?”
“Yep, just like us,” he said. “Fact is, we talk too much, you an’ me. Just shut your mouth an’ open your legs, now.”
Cheeky sod.
OCTOBER 1905
Gertrude Waterhouse
I do like to make an effort with my At Homes. I always have them in the front parlor, and use the rose-pattern tea set, and Elizabeth bakes a cake-lemon this week.
Albert asks sometimes if we oughtn’t use the front parlor as the dining room instead, rather than eating in the back parlor, which is a bit cramped when the table is pulled out. Now, Albert is right in most things, but when it comes to running a household I do get my way. I always feel better having a “best” room to show visitors to, even if it’s only used once or twice a week. Thus I have insisted that we leave the rooms as they are, though I admit it is a bit inconvenient to fold the table back three times a day.
It is very silly, too, and I will never tell Albert, but I also prefer to have my At Homes in the front parlor because it is out of view of the Colemans’ house. This is very silly because for one thing, according to Livy, who has been to them a few times with Maude (I have never gone, of course), Kitty Coleman has her At Homes in her morning room, which is on the other side of the house, overlooking the street rather than us. And even if it were on this side, she would hardly have the time to look out of her window over at us. But just the same I do not like to think of her presence at my back, judging what I do. It would make me nervous and unable to attend to my visitors.
I am always a little anxious when Lavinia goes to Kitty Coleman’s At Homes, which I’m relieved to say is not very often. Indeed, more often than not the girls come here after school. Maude says it’s much more snug here, which on reflection I think is intended as a compliment rather than a comment on the lack of space. At any rate I have decided to take it as such. She is a dear girl and I do try to see her as separate from her mother.
I am quietly pleased that, for all the space and elegance of the Colemans’ house, it is here that the girls prefer to be. Livy says their house gets very cold and drafty except in the kitchen, and she fears she’ll catch a chill-though really, apart from her fainting she has a robust constitution and a healthy appetite. She also says she prefers our comfortable dark sofas and chairs and the velvet curtains to Kitty Coleman’s taste for rattan furniture and venetian blinds.
Until the girls arrive back from school, Ivy May helps me with the At Homes, passing around the cake and taking the pot back to the kitchen for Elizabeth to fill. The ladies who come-neighbors from the street and from church, and stalwart friends who make the journey from Islington to see me, bless them-all smile at her, though they are often puzzled by her as well.
She is indeed a funny little thing. At first her refusal to speak very often did upset me, but over time I’ve grown used to it and now love her the better for it. Ivy May’s silence can be a great comfort after Livy’s dramas and tears. And there is nothing the matter with her head-she reads and writes well enough for a girl of seven, and her numbers are good. In a year I will send her to school with Livy and Maude, and then it may be harder for her-her teachers may not be so patient with her as we are.
I asked her once why she said so little, and the dear replied, “When I do speak, you listen.” It is surprising that someone so young should have worked that out for herself. I could have done with the lesson-I do go on and on, from nerves and to fill the silence. Sometimes in front of Kitty Coleman I could just sink into the ground from hearing myself chatter like a performing monkey. Kitty Coleman just smiles as if she’s terribly bored but hiding it so civilly.
When the girls get home Livy immediately takes over the passing out of the cake to the ladies, and little Ivy May sits quietly in the corner. It breaks my heart sometimes. Still, I am glad to have the girls around me, and I try to make things as comfortable as possible. Here at least I can have some influence over them. I don’t know what Kitty Coleman gets up to when they are at Maude’s. Mostly she ignores them, according to Livy.
They like to come here, but they love best of all to go to the cemetery. I have had to limit how often Livy may go-else she’d be up there every day. As it is I do believe she lies to me about it. A neighbor said she thought she saw Livy and Maude running among the graves with a boy one day when she was meant to be playing at Maude‘s, but when I questioned her she denied it, saying the neighbor must need new spectacles! I did not look convinced, and Livy began to cry to think I suspected her of lying. So really I do not know what to think.
I wanted to have a word with Kitty Coleman about the frequency of their visits-it being she who most often takes them. What an awkward conversation it was! She does make me feel such a fool. When I suggested that it was perhaps unhealthy for them to visit the cemetery so often, she replied, “Oh, the girls are getting plenty of fresh air, which is very healthy for them. But really if they want to go there, we have Queen Victoria to blame for it, elevating mourning to such ridiculous heights that girls with romantic notions grow drunk from it.”
Well! I was mortified, and not a little angry too. Apart from the slight on Livy, Kitty Coleman knows how dear the late Queen still is to me, God bless her soul. There is no need to go criticizing the dead. I told Kitty Coleman so, straight to her face.
She just smiled and said, “If we can’t criticize her now, when can we? Do so when she was alive and we’d likely have been tried for treason.”