Swigging down her tea in a few gulps, Bridget rose to her feet. She’d see to the bairns same as normal and carry out the rest of the day’s tasks, but that wouldn’t stop her popping her head round Mrs Lemaire’s door every so often and asking if she wanted anything. Her mam was a great one for believing the best in folk, she’d make excuses for Old Nick himself, would her mam, but Bridget wasn’t so sure about the master and mistress in all of this. They might have taken Mrs Lemaire in but they hadn’t done it willingly, and
she couldn’t see them putting themselves out for the poor soul. Aye, she’d keep an eye on her today, just to be sure.
In spite of her good intentions it was nearly eleven o’clock before Bridget knocked on the door of the guest room. David and Patience had been fractious first thing; the twins had heavy colds and seeing to them had taken twice as long as usual, and although she had hurried through her chores she felt as though she had been chasing her tail non-stop. It was her mother, who had prepared an elevenses tray with teacakes warm from the oven and a glass of hot milk, who alerted her to the lateness of the morning. ‘Leave that ironin’, lass,’ Kitty called into the scullery where Bridget was tackling a basketful of the children’s clothes, ‘and take a bite up to the master’s sister. She didn’t have but a mouthful of porridge this mornin’ and she didn’t touch the bacon and eggs as far as I could see.’
Bridget knocked gently on the bedroom door. The twins were having their long morning nap and John and Matthew were at their lessons in the schoolroom with their tutor, who had battled through the snow for the first time in a week, but the master and mistress, although ensconced in the morning room, had ears like cuddy’s lugs and she would prefer not to attract their attention.
She knocked twice before she heard a weak, ‘Come in,’ and when she opened the door Mrs Lemaire was not in the chair by the window but in bed. Even from the doorway Bridget could see her face looked colourless. She hadn’t appeared well that morning, but now she seemed ten times worse.
Crossing the room rapidly, Bridget placed the tray on the bedside table and bent over the still figure. ‘What is it, ma’am? Shall I call the mistress?’
‘No.’ Esther reached out her hand and caught that of the maid’s, holding it with a strength that belied her appearance. ‘I think sitting by the window for a while wasn’t such a good idea. I’m tired, that’s all, and the chair has made my back ache.’
‘Do you think you could eat a little, ma’am?’
‘Not just at the moment, thank you, Bridget. I’ll sleep and maybe have some lunch later.’
Once the maid had left the room, Esther found she couldn’t
sleep though. She was suffering some sort of cramping seizure in her back and felt strangely uncomfortable. When Bridget returned with her lunch an hour or two later she still managed to put on a brave face, but by evening the pains had moved round to her stomach and she knew the baby was coming. It was three weeks early by her reckoning, but such was the ferocity of the pains she knew there was no doubt, and when Bridget insisted the mistress must be told, she did not protest.
By midnight the baby still hadn’t been born and Esther was in a state of collapse, drifting in and out of consciousness between the pains which were racking her body with relentless regularity. She was aware of very little besides her agony, but she knew Bridget was kneeling by the side of the bed and holding tight to her hand. At one point she thought she heard the little maid arguing with Mary and demanding that a doctor be called to the house, but then she told herself she must have imagined it. Bridget wouldn’t dare to tell her mistress what to do.
Aeons of time later, or was it just a few minutes – she was beyond telling – a kindly face bent over her and a deep male voice said, ‘Mrs Lemaire, can you hear me? I’m Dr Lawrence and I’ve come to take care of you, m’dear. Everything is going to be all right, you’re in safe hands.’
The baby, a little girl, was born three excruciating hours later. As the infant took her first breath, Esther breathed her last. The doctor and Mary were dealing with the child so it was only Bridget who was aware of Esther’s passing. A deep breath, a flutter of her eyelashes and she was gone.
‘Dr Lawrence?’
Bridget was still holding Esther’s hand but it had gone limp in her grasp, and the note in her voice caused the doctor to spin round and bend over his patient.
It was a minute or two before he straightened, and then his voice was sad-sounding. ‘There’s nothing I can do. She was not bleeding unduly and although the child took its time it wasn’t a particularly long labour. I can only think her heart was not strong.’
Mary had come to the foot of the bed, holding the baby wrapped in a blanket, and after a moment she said, ‘I understand from my
husband that his mother had another child two years after he was born who only lived six months. It was thought there was a problem with that child’s heart.’
Dr Lawrence nodded. ‘It could well be a defect of some kind that was passed down. Mrs Lemaire might have lived to old age had she not had children, but both carrying a child and bringing it forth fatigues the mother, and in this case it was too much. I’m very sorry.’
Bridget was listening to the conversation above her head but she could not bring herself to let go of the slim white hand in hers. Mrs Lemaire was dead; after all that pain she was dead – and she hadn’t even seen her daughter. And the baby, it would never know its mother, poor little mite, and its father dead too. What a start to life.
Bridget watched as her mistress drew the doctor to the other side of the room, there to confer with him in low whispers. She caught a few words: ‘ . . . husband recently died and left destitute,’ and then ‘ . . . do our Christian duty to the best of our ability,’ but as she laid the still warm, soft hand on the coverlet and stood stiffly to her feet, she could make out nothing more.
‘Take the child, Bridget.’ Mary’s voice was quiet as she held out the bundle, but behind her sombre facade she was feeling heady with relief. She had been in turmoil ever since Jeremiah’s sister had entered the house, and had laid awake most nights worrying what the outcome of this catastrophe would be. Now it appeared her frantic prayers had been answered. The problem was taken care of. Of course, it would have been more beneficial if the child had died with its mother, but it was clearly strong and healthy, which was a pity. But she would not shirk her responsibility. The child would be brought up in the sight of God, and any badness thrashed out of it before it could take root and grow, as it had with the mother.
She glanced at the still figure on the bed, at the golden hair fanning out in a mass of silky curls and waves across the pillow, and her mouth tightened into a thin line. History would not repeat itself. Not while she had breath in her body.
‘She’s bonny, isn’t she, Mam? Have you ever seen a bonnier babbie in all the world?’ Bridget gazed down in rapt adoration of the sleeping baby in her arms, the small face with its silky smooth skin and tiny eyelashes and rosebud lips enchanting. ‘The mistress’s bairns were nothing like this. Skinned rabbits they were and they’ve all got her nose.’
It was a full week later. Esther had been buried in the churchyard next to her parents that afternoon, and although the day had been dark and overcast and bitterly cold, it had kept dry until the last guest had gone home. Now, at nearly midnight, the wind was howling like a banshee and rattling the windows, and the second bout of snow they had been expecting for the last day or two was coming down thick and fast.
The funeral had been a quiet one, attended by a few older folk who remembered Esther as a child and had come to pay their respects at the church service, and several colleagues of Jeremiah who sat with him on the local Board of Guardians for the Sunderland workhouse among other things. They and their lady wives were invited back to the vicarage for refreshments. The villagers were not.
Dr Lawrence had been one of the guests. When he had asked
after the deceased’s child, he had been told she was feeding well and thriving. The baby was to be christened Sophy Miriam in the spring, after her dear grandmother, and they did so hope Dr Lawrence and his wife would do them the honour of becoming the child’s godparents, Mary had added. The doctor had happily consented. ‘Such a fortunate little girl,’ he had commented on the way home to his wife, ‘to have devoted guardians like Jeremiah and Mary.’
Bridget now carefully placed the sleeping baby in the old wicker laundry basket which Mary had delegated as the child’s crib. The lace-bedecked Moses basket which had been made for her own babies was stored away in the attics, and she had looked askance at Bridget when she had suggested fetching it down.
‘She’s a picture,’ Kitty agreed, joining her daughter and stroking one tiny velvet cheek, ‘aren’t you, my precious? It’s a cryin’ shame, my little flower. A cryin’ shame.’
Bridget didn’t need to ask what her mother meant. The mistress had made it abundantly clear from day one that she was far too busy to see to a newborn baby, neither did she want her niece intruding into their family life. The child would do far better being kept in the kitchen in front of the range where it was always warm, and if she survived the next weeks, which of course one never could tell with such a small baby, either Bridget or her mother would attend to her needs.
‘She’ll survive,’ Bridget had said grimly to Kitty when her mother had related the mistress’s instructions. ‘If I have to feed her every hour, day and night, she’ll survive, poor little mite.’
In fact, the ‘poor little mite’ was doing exceedingly well. She fed lustily on the pap bottles she was given every two or three hours, and slept like an angel between times. And she was, without doubt, as bonny as Bridget declared, her milky smooth skin and delicate features doll-like, and her small arms and legs plump and rounded in spite of the fact she was so tiny.
On the second day after her birth, Jeremiah had come into the kitchen to see his niece. He had stood gazing down into the wicker basket which Patrick had placed on two orange boxes to protect
it from draughts, and he hadn’t said a word. The baby had been awake and, unusually for her, had begun crying after a moment or two. When Bridget had come forward to pick her up, Jeremiah had left as silently as he had arrived, leaving Bridget and her parents staring at each other.
Bridget had cradled the tiny bundle to her as she’d whispered, ‘What do you make of that?’
It was Patrick who had put into words what they were all thinking. ‘If he had his way, that bairn’d be six foot under alongside her mam.’
After that the three of them made sure Sophy wasn’t left alone for a moment, and Bridget had asked her father to carry the lumpy flock mattress off her narrow iron bed into the kitchen where she had taken to sleeping at night. In truth it was no hardship. The kitchen was lovely and warm compared to the little icebox of a room that was hers, situated next to her parents’ – equally cold – larger room, and she slept well, secure in the knowledge she would hear Sophy when she awoke for a feed.
‘She’s already fillin’ out a bit,’ Kitty said, as the two women stood, arms linked, gazing down at the sleeping baby. ‘All thanks to you, lass. No mother could take more care of their little one than you’re doin’ with her.’
‘I love her,’ Bridget said simply. She had long ago resigned herself to the fact that she was destined to be an old maid. After one brief affair of the heart when she was eighteen years old, seven years ago now, which had ended badly, she hadn’t had another beau. Working all hours as she did, she rarely made use of her half-day off on a Sunday afternoon, which made the chance of meeting someone non-existent. But now the void in her life was filled with Sophy. The tiny baby – she couldn’t weigh more than five pounds – had had her heart from the moment she’d set eyes on her, still covered in blood and slime from her mother’s womb.
‘Aye, well, it’s a good job someone does.’ Kitty patted her daughter’s arm before turning away. ‘I’m off to bed, lass. Your da’s already snorin’ fit to wake the dead, bless him.’
‘’Night, Mam.’ Bridget stood looking down at Sophy for another
moment or two before beginning to get ready for bed. In her cold little cell of a room she had always whipped off her dress and apron as fast as she could, and pulled her thick flannelette nightdress over her shift and petticoat. Even with the feather-filled eiderdown she had treated herself to a few winters back to augment the coarse brown blankets on her bed, she’d lain shivering for half an hour or more, no matter how tired she was. Now she undressed in front of the range, relishing the warmth, and was always asleep as soon as she snuggled under the covers heaped on the mattress. Sophy sometimes snuffled and sucked at her fingers but she didn’t mind that; it was comforting and flooded her with a quiet joy to know the baby was close at hand.
After laying her clothes on one of the armchairs and pulling on her nightdress, Bridget knelt down to say her prayers. Her parents had been born and raised as staunch Protestants in Ireland, leaving the Old Country for a new life in England before she was born, and had brought their only daughter up to believe unquestioningly in a Protestant God. Kitty had been sad when there were no more babies after Bridget, but had accepted it as God’s will and got on with her life, and there was much of her mother’s pragmatic approach to life in Bridget. Her prayers reflected this. First, she recited the Lord’s Prayer as she did each night, following this with requests for protection for each member of the household, lingering longer over little Sophy. The last third of her prayers centred on her own needs and since Sophy had been born, they were simple. ‘Please let the master and mistress keep her but let me look after her because You know they don’t really want her, dear God. I love her and I know her mam would have wanted me to take care of her. Bless Mrs Lemaire now at peace with You, in Your Holy Name. Amen.’
After putting out the oil lamp in the centre of the kitchen table, Bridget snuggled into bed by the faint light given out by the range and was asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.