Sarah shifted uncomfortably before she said, ‘Lady Margaret, I don’t think you should be talking to me like this.’
‘I am sure I shouldn’t. It isn’t done - that’s what you mean, isn’t it? Miss Brown, last night I went to see my mother-in-law, and for the first time in nine years of marriage to her son, I actually
talked
to her, but it took a catastrophe to make it happen.’
Sarah detected a slightly animated note in the hitherto even voice, and after a moment she inclined her head slowly. ‘Yes, I can understand why you are feeling relieved this morning,’ she said quietly.
‘Last night I came to the end of my tether, and that is what I tried to explain to Lady Harris. I have always found the list of dos and don’ts that go hand-in-hand with my class extremely tiresome, and when I married Sir Geoffrey they became even more so. The stiff upper lip is a crippling British tradition, Sarah.’
Lady Margaret now straightened, her hands resting either side of her thighs on the velvet seat as she leant slightly forward and said, ‘I am very grateful that you stood up to my husband in the way you did. I know it can’t have been easy, and I won’t forget it. I - I would like to talk with you again sometime, if I may? I find town life rather dull on the whole.’ Then, her voice changing, she said, ‘Well, this really won’t do. I have promised to take William and Constance for a turn round the little park opposite before lunch. Although their tutor set some lessons for them before we left Fenwick, they do get rather bored at times. They miss their ponies and their friends, no doubt.’
She rose now, nodding and smiling as Sarah followed suit. ‘I’ll leave you to the flowers, Sarah.’
Two Sarahs in as many minutes! In spite of the emotion of the night and the revelations of the morning, Sarah found it was Lady Margaret’s softened attitude towards her that occupied her mind as she finished arranging the bowl of flowers, and then made her way to the kitchen to help Hilda with the lunch, Peggy having been sent back to bed. Pausing in the passageway before opening the kitchen door, she realized that her previous assumption that Lady Margaret disliked her had been unfounded. It wasn’t that Lady Margaret had held any animosity towards her, just that she had been - Sarah searched for the right words and found them - locked into herself, into her situation. Poor soul.
She surprised herself on the last thought, but then inclined her head slowly. Lady Margaret
was
a poor soul, and just as much a victim of Sir Geoffrey as Peggy. She must have had a terrible time of it before she broke out last night, and that was the right phrase sure enough. She had the appearance this morning of a person who had been released, set free. It just showed that you never really knew what was going on in other people’s lives.
The thought brought Rebecca to the forefront of her mind again and she frowned. For months now she hadn’t been able to rid herself of the notion that her friend was hiding something, but every time she had asked her, Rebecca had denied anything was wrong. Something was troubling her, though, and it had to do with her pig of a husband. Her description of Willie Dalton brought Sarah up short. Therein lay the problem: Rebecca knew what she thought of Willie, she’d always known it, as did the man himself, and Rebecca was always careful to say nothing that would inflame her low opinion. Not that it could get any lower.
Sarah thought back to the first time she had met Rebecca’s husband, when he and Rebecca had been courting for a few weeks. She had heard plenty about him from her friend before then, Rebecca having met Willie at a barn dance the local vicar had put on, the proceeds of which had gone towards the war effort. Sarah had been ill on the night of the dance, but Rebecca had come back to Hatfield glowing, and full of the young docker who had monopolized her all evening. She had fully expected to like Rebecca’s choice of beau when she had met him - Rebecca had been able to talk of little else for weeks - but she hadn’t, and he hadn’t liked her either. Oh, he’d been charming enough, obsequious even, but he had known she could see right through him, Sarah thought flatly.
‘Your busy little friend’; that was how he had always referred to her, his thick lips moving in the semblance of a smile; but he had known, and she had known, that he was being insulting. Why hadn’t Rebecca been able to see the type of man he really was? But she hadn’t, in spite of Sarah’s repeated warnings. And so Rebecca had married him . . .
It hadn’t been too bad when old Mrs Dalton was alive. Sarah pictured the formidable virago in her mind. Willie’s mother had actively encouraged her to call at the house, and Willie had tempered his attitude accordingly, but with his mother’s passing the resentment that had always been lurking under the surface had turned into open hostility. Oh, he was a horrible,
horrible
man.
Sarah shivered suddenly, before pushing open the kitchen door and stepping into the warmth of Hilda’s domain.
The elderly cook turned from stirring a pan of soup at her entrance, nodding her head as she said, ‘All quiet out there now? What a to-do, eh? Mind you, my Arthur always used to say, the gentry have too much time on their hands for dillydallyings. Half of ’em are skittering from one bed to another, it’s a wonder any of them find their way home at night, if you ask me. They ought to talk about this tidal wave of divorce that has hit the country, and I don’t agree it’s all down to the war. Fifty thousand divorces they reckon this year, you know. Fifty thousand! That’s double what it was two years ago, and now they’ve cut the time between the decree nisi and the decree absolute from six months to six weeks. What sort of an idea is that giving people? And it all comes from the top, I’m telling you, Sarah.’
It was one of Hilda’s pet hobby horses, and Sarah had heard it all before, so now she said, ‘Well I wouldn’t blame Lady Margaret if she wanted a divorce, Hilda.’
‘Well no, perhaps in those circumstances. Mind you, she must have known what he was like before she married him.’
‘She might not have.’ Sarah sat down at the kitchen table and pulled a metal bowl of peapods towards her as she spoke.
‘I’d dare take a bet on it. Besides which, looking like she does, I suppose she thought any man was better than no man at all.’
Sarah shut her eyes for a moment before opening them and starting to shell the peas. Hilda didn’t mean to be unkind, but that made it worse somehow. People could be cruel, oh, they could. There were times when she could honestly say she hated people.
As though it was yesterday she could hear Mary Owen, and Jane, and the rest of their cronies, chanting out the song Mary had made up about her, the soft chorus bitingly distinct in the dark dormitory.
Sarah Brown, Sarah Brown,
Mam’s on the streets and da’s a navvy,
Didn’t want her, couldn’t keep her,
Left poor Sarah in some old lavvy.
It had started on the first night she had returned to the dormitory from the hospital, and continued every evening for a week, until she had rounded on Mary, who had been a good deal heavier and bigger than herself, dragging her out of bed by her hair and pinning her against the wall, whilst threatening she would bash her face in if she ever uttered the words again. Like all bullies, Mary was something of a coward, and the chanting had stopped, although other, more subtle forms of spitefulness had continued.
The only bright spot in her days had been when the doctor called and she managed to have a word with him. She had always seemed to sense when he was in the building, and had homed in on him like a small and very determined pigeon, something which had often seem to amuse him. And then the war had started, and Dr Mallard had gone away to fight, and that had been that.
She had heard, some time after the war had ended and when she was first working for the Robertses, that Dr Mallard had been a prisoner-of-war of the Japanese. She hadn’t liked the thought of that. She had been glad he was alive, but from the news reports, and the way Mr Roberts had spoken about the atrocities committed on their soldiers, she had wondered if he might have been better off if he had been killed outright.
‘Has Peggy told you she’s thinking of moving out and taking a course in book-keeping and typing?’ Hilda’s voice penetrated the past. ‘Seems she’s always fancied the idea but her father wouldn’t hear of it, wanted her working and sending her wage home the minute she was able.’
‘Moving out?’ Sarah finished the last of the peas, and rested her hands on the table, her brow furrowed. ‘I don’t like the idea of that, Hilda. She’s very vulnerable at the moment, and where would she go?’
‘Oh, there’s lots of families in the East End who take in the odd paying guest to make ends meet, decent folk most of them, she’d be all right,’ Hilda said stolidly.
Sarah nodded slowly. She hoped so, but Peggy was a very young fifteen-year-old and, as the incident with Sir Geoffrey had proven, could be both foolish and naive on occasion. But then, the young maid was little more than a bairn.
The northern word, which had sprung so naturally to mind, brought Maggie into the kitchen, and suddenly the longing to see her again, and Florrie and Rebecca, was so strong she could taste it. Those three knew all there was to know about her, and they didn’t mind. She didn’t have to pretend with them, to talk properly all the time, to act a part. They accepted her for what she was. But then, she didn’t know what - or more to the point, who - she was herself, not really. She never would until she confronted the woman who had given birth to her then abandoned her so completely.
The weight in her heart seemed to drop right through her so her feet were tethered to the floor, and she remained quite still, half leaning on the table, as Hilda bustled away to the dining room with the trolley containing the soup tureen and bread basket.
There was a hole at the beginning of her life, a wide gaping hole, instead of a family with grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. She could be anyone. Even her name wasn’t her own - it hadn’t been
chosen
for her by her parents, merely assigned to her by strangers. Had her mother hoped she would die in that freezing toilet? Had she really wanted her own flesh and blood dead? She had to find her one day and ask her that, among other things. She would never feel completely at peace until she did.
‘One day . . .’ She said the words out loud, but softly. She would do it one day. She brought her lips tightly together and drew them inwards between her teeth. What was it Maggie always said? Oh yes: ‘Choose your own road and then you’ve only yourself to blame if it comes to a dead end.’ Maggie was full of such aphorisms, born of her northern roots. Well, she
had
chosen her own road and she was going to make sure it didn’t come to a dead end. It was up to her.
She nodded to herself, narrowing her eyes. And one day she would find her mother and show her that she had succeeded in building a life for herself, that she was
worth
something. She just wanted to see her mother’s face once, talk to her, ask her
why
, that would be enough. It would, it would be enough.
The emotion in her chest caused her body to sag briefly, and she consciously turned her mind away from herself and back to the problem in hand, namely Peggy. She would go with the girl if Peggy decided to take lodgings somewhere, make sure she was with a good family and so on, before she let Peggy move in. Peggy had as much right to choose her own road as she did, but the fewer byways and culs-de-sac available to the little maid, the better.
That thought was still with her when, a few days later and with the confirmation that there would be no ‘complication’ arising from Sir Geoffrey’s attack on Peggy, Sarah accompanied the girl to a street in Whitechapel.
‘It’s number forty-four.’ Peggy was clutching a card she had obtained from the local newsagent’s window as they walked along the street of terraced houses, the murky winter twilight accentuating the grimness of their surroundings. They passed a group of raggedy urchins intent on a noisy game of hopscotch on the greasy pavement, and Sarah was disturbed to notice that despite the coldness of the evening one or two of them were without coats or jumpers. Not that shivering children were a new sight; no, far from it, she told herself silently. Up north they were ten a penny. But this was London, where the streets were supposed to be paved with gold . . .
‘I hope you’re going to like this one, miss.’ Peggy’s tone was slightly reproachful. They had visited three houses so far, and Sarah hadn’t approved of any of them. ‘With me course being in St Martin’s Street I don’t want to live too far away, and the new maid is starting Monday. I need to get somewhere today.’
‘It’s very important you get the right establishment, Peggy.’
There was a long pause and then Peggy said, ‘I don’t think any of these will be establishments, miss. They’re just ordinary houses, like me mum’s.’