‘Goodbye, Miss,’ I said. ‘Be careful, won’t you?’
‘We shall keep out of the way of the guns,’ she said, laughing - although that was not what I meant at all.
I had no time to spare worrying about Miss Brookfield, however; with a houseful of guests there was plenty to be getting on with. We had all sorts of people staying at the Hall, from Lord Vye’s older sister and her husband (the Duke and Duchess of Hamworthy) who had come for the shooting, to a very well-known lady gardener by the name of Dorothy MacIntyre who had come to look at Lord Vye’s hothouses. I’d thought a gardener might be taking her meals downstairs with us in the servants’ hall, but not a bit of it. Miss MacIntyre was given the Red Room, the finest guest bedroom in the whole house, and Mary told me the Vyes saw it as a great honour to have her to stay. She didn’t actually do much work in the garden, I gathered (although you might have thought so from the state of her clothes, which were on the shabby side), but rather told people what they should be planting and where. The only trouble was, Lord Vye was too taken up with the shooting to pay Miss MacIntyre much attention, so Harriet and Miss Habershon ended up taking her round the hothouses and the gardens. It would have been better for her to have come another weekend, in my opinion, but she seemed to have hit it off with Miss Habershon and wasn’t too put out not to have His Lordship as a guide.
I was tidying up in the Red Room whilst they were gone, wondering whether Miss MacIntyre had brought a gown that I should lay out for her to change into later (she didn’t seem to have anything suitable, but surely she couldn’t take tea in those moth-eaten old tweeds) when the idea suddenly struck me that a lady gardener might be a very good ally for Miss Harriet.
‘She might be persuaded to drop a word in Her Ladyship’s ear about your studies,’ I said to Harriet, when she was changing for tea herself. (The children always went down to the drawing room to chat with the Vyes’ guests for an hour or so at that time.) ‘Why, she might even know about this medical college you were talking about, the type of lady she is. She could tell Lady Vye it was a respectable place.’ If that were truly the case; I still had my doubts.
‘Do you really think she would help me?’
‘No harm in asking. Why don’t you have a word with her about it now, before she goes downstairs?’
‘Perhaps I shall,’ she said. ‘At least it’s worth a try.’
It was getting dark by the time Miss Brookfield and Master Rory came back from their ride. Nobody else was about - tea already being served in the drawing room - but I had been dusting the hall table and saw them walk in through the back door from the stables. They didn’t notice me; they were far too wrapped up in each other. Rory had opened the door for Miss Brookfield. As she walked through, she looked up at him with such a weight of meaning in her eyes: shy and bold at the same time somehow, and questioning, as though she were waiting for him to speak. Neither of them said a word, however. They stood there, looking at each other in silence for a good few seconds, and then Rory lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. I shrank back into the shadows, wishing I hadn’t had to see them.
Miss Brookfield rested in her room until dinner, and she was very thoughtful while I helped her change into a beautiful black brocade gown, with a bodice of black net embroidered all over in gold thread and little gold stars. It was shaping up to be quite an evening. When I brought hot water to Miss Harriet’s room a little while later, she had two pieces of news to share. The first was that Miss MacIntyre had turned up trumps. She thought it was ‘perfectly splendid’ that Harriet should want to be a doctor, couldn’t imagine a finer governess than Miss Habershon, and had promised to think of a way to bring Lady Vye round to the idea. The second was that she had wormed out of her brother Edward the fact that he planned to ask Miss Brookfield to marry him before she went to Italy, and that he was probably going to propose that very night, after dinner.
‘Surely she must say yes,’ Megan sighed, as we discussed the matter while collecting our cleaning boxes from the housemaids’ pantry after our own supper. ‘She seems to like him well enough.’
‘But you can’t help thinking she’d have more fun with Master Rory,’ Becky said. ‘They’re as alike as two peas in a pod! Master Edward is far too solemn for her.’
‘She needs somebody like that to keep her feet on the ground,’ Jane said. ‘Besides, if she marries him she will be mistress of Swallowcliffe one day, and that’s a prize worth having.’
I couldn’t bear to say anything, and only hoped with all my heart that Miss Brookfield would come to the right decision. Apparently she and Master Edward spent some time alone together out on the terrace (it being too cold for Mrs Brookfield to chaperone her daughter and everyone else having the tact to stay indoors), but there was no announcement made after they came back in, and nobody knew quite what had passed between them.
Miss Brookfield was still unusually quiet when she came up to her room for the night. ‘May I have a glass of warm milk, please?’ she asked, after I’d helped make her comfortable and was about to go. ‘Something tells me I shall have trouble sleeping.’
That was the only reference she made to anything being out of the ordinary - except that when I came back with the milk a little while later, she suddenly asked me, ‘Have you ever found, Polly, that your heart tells you one thing and your head another? Which is the right one to follow, do you think?’
‘Perhaps you should wait until they’re both leading you in the same direction,’ I said. ‘Although I would trust my head over my heart if I had to choose between them.’
As it happened, Miss Brookfield went off to Italy a couple of days later with Master Edward’s proposal still hanging in the air. She hadn’t said yes, Mr Goddard told Mr Wilkins who told Mary, who told Becky, Jane, Megan and me - but she hadn’t said no, either. Edward would have to wait for her decision until Christmas, and so would the rest of us.
And what of the plan to save Miss Habershon? ‘It worked like clockwork,’ Miss Harriet told me the next day. ‘If only I’d been there to see what happened. Miss MacIntyre told my stepmother how impressed she was by my knowledge of plants, and how excellently I had been taught. Was there any chance she might be persuaded to part with that young governess, because she happened to know that the Gore-Smythes were in urgent need of a tutor for their three daughters and Lord Gore-Smythe hadn’t been able to find anyone in London with the slightest knowledge of botany, let alone any of the other sciences. And he was prepared to pay up to forty guineas a year.’
‘Wasn’t that a risk?’ I asked. ‘What if Her Ladyship had said yes?’
‘But she wouldn’t, you see - that was the clever part. If Lord Gore-Smythe’s daughters are to be taught science, then it must be the done thing and perfectly all right for me. The Gore-Smythes set the tone in London, Miss MacIntyre says - she has designed their garden in Bedford Square. Then apparently someone leaned across the table said that if there was any talk of the Vyes’ governess being let go, they would like to have her for their children and would pay quite as much as Lord Gore-Smythe if not more because she was obviously quite a find.’
More than forty guineas! Some folks certainly have more money than sense, I decided.
‘So then,’ Harriet went on, ‘my stepmother said firmly that Miss Habershon was staying at Swallowcliffe for the foreseeable future, and she hoped no one would think of trying to tempt her away. She told Miss Habershon this morning that there seemed to have been some misunderstanding - she would like her to continue to teach me and would leave the subject matter in her hands, so long as I worked hard.’
‘Well, good for Miss MacIntyre. Only, it might be an idea not to mention this medical college for a while. No sense in pushing things, is there?’
‘Maybe not,’ Harriet admitted. ‘I shan’t forget about it, though.’
‘I’m sure you won’t,’ I said, smiling as I went back to the grate.
So that was Miss Harriet settled, and one problem off my mind. The days passed, November arrived and one morning a new smell floated through the Hall from the kitchen: dark brown, sweet and spicy. Mrs Bragg was making mincemeat and plum pudding. Before we knew where we were, Christmas would be here. I found myself thinking about Iris a great deal of the time; she had probably had her baby by now, and I prayed for them both every night. And then one morning, almost as though I had willed it by wishing so hard, I opened my mother’s weekly letter to find a note folded inside, and knew instantly that it had come from Iris. She must have known her handwriting might have been recognized and the letter opened, had she sent it directly to the Hall.
‘I have been in two minds for some time as to whether to pass this on,’ my mother wrote, ‘but seeing how anxious you were about your friend, I thought you should like to have word from her. Of course you cannot visit the workhouse (how could she ever suggest such a thing!) but at least you know she is alive and has been safely delivered.’
This is what Iris had written to me:
20 November 1890
My dearest Polly
I hope this letter reaches you, and that your mother will forgive me for sending it to her in the first instance. How are you, my dear friend? I think of you often and wonder what is happening at Swallowcliffe. It seems a very long way from here, although in fact I am less than fifteen miles away. Please do not be too shocked when I tell you that I was admitted to the workhouse in Hardingbridge a little while ago. My parents did not want to take me back at home on account of the shame I have brought upon the family, which was much as I expected. But the workhouse is not such a bad place, and last week my baby was born here - a beautiful boy - which may shock you too, although I think you must have known he was on the way. Do you think too badly of me? I hope not, because I have something very important to ask you.
Would you come and see me? We are not allowed visitors as a rule but I have said that you are my sister and so they have permitted me one visit. I know this may be difficult for you to arrange, but can you come in three weeks’ time, on the morning of Sunday December 14th? That is when they will allow me to see you. You can take the train to Hardingbridge, it is only a few stops further down the line from Little Rising. The workhouse is in Union Street - everyone knows where it is.
You may feel uncomfortable about being seen in such an establishment, which I quite understand, but there is really nothing to fear. Please come if you can, Polly, dear - I must talk to you about an urgent matter. You may well not want to see me again but could you find it in your heart to grant this request, for old times’ sake? I have no one else to ask, and there is no other soul in the world I would rather see than you.
Do not desert me, I beg you,
Your loving friend
Iris Baker
The workhouse! As soon as I read that word, the rest of the letter seemed to dissolve in front of my eyes. To think of my lovely, sweet Iris ending up in such a place! I had to read her note several times to take in the rest of it, and then another set of worries came thick and fast. My mother had shilly-shallied so long in sending on the letter that Sunday December 14th was a matter of days away. It would be near on impossible to arrange for time off to visit Iris at such short notice - and pay for the train fare, besides. We would not get our last quarter’s wages until after Christmas, and I only had two shillings to my name.
I laid the letter aside with Iris’s final words sounding in my head: ‘Do not desert me, I beg you.’
How could I let her down?
Twelve
The Workhouse should be a place of hardship, of coarse fare, of degradation and humility; it should be administered with strictness, with severity; it should be as repulsive as is consistent with humanity.
Reverend H H Milman, 1832
It was a long walk up Union Street to the workhouse, and not made any shorter by the crowd of noisy children who left off playing in the road to follow behind me, laughing and shouting. When I came to a stop outside the porter’s lodge, the jeers rose to a crescendo and a stone came whizzing through the air very close to my head. By the time I turned around, they had already taken to their heels, so I vented my feelings on the door knocker instead and gave it a good hammering.
The door flew open and I found myself looking into the watery eyes of an elderly gentleman with flushed cheeks, a bulbous red-veined nose and two of the bushiest grey sideburns I had ever seen.
‘All right, all right!’ he said irritably. ‘Why should you be in such a hurry to enter this place, young lady?’
‘Sorry, sir,’ I replied, ‘my nerves are all in a jangle this morning.’ There was no point in getting on the wrong side of him - you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, as my mother likes to say.
‘Aye, as well they might be,’ he said, not unkindly. ‘Most folks who come this way finds themselves all jangled up in one way or another. And they look a darn sight worse than yourself, in the main.’
‘But I have only come on a visit, not to stay.’ I hurried to put him right. ‘My fr - my sister is here, and I am to see her today.’