‘I’m sorry I’ve offended you, Nanny,’ she muttered. ‘Let’s all have a helping of this delicious pudding . . . Adolphus, will you serve?’
Nanny, passing her plate, gave Sara a small, secret smile, but Sara saw her mother watching her and did not add fuel to the fire by returning it. Instead, as she passed the plate, she gave Nanny’s hand a discreet squeeze. And Nanny squeezed back, before turning the conversation neatly into safer, less inflammable subjects.
It’s going to be all right, Sara thought thankfully, as conversation became general once more. And after we’ve had our meal, I’m going to show Nanny how to make a really huge snowman in the back yard!
Chapter Three
On the day after Boxing Day, Sara awoke to find that the snowstorm which had battered the city for two whole days and nights had ceased. Outside her window frail sunshine shone on trees and hedges heaped with snow, on a garden which might just as well have been a meadow so totally snow-blanketed was it, and on the hushed and wonderful world of deep winter.
‘Miss Sara, it’s time you were gettin’ up. I’m now goin’ down to fetch your breakfast.’ Jane popped her head round the edge of Sara’s door and beamed at her. ‘The bloomin’ snow’s stopped, which is one blessing, an’ the sun’s shinin’. Your pa said we was to go to the park today, so that’s just what we’ll do, soon’s I’ve finished me work.’
Sara sat up in bed and smiled back at Jane. ‘Oh, lovely, I love the park,’ she said enthusiastically. ‘Poor Nanny, she loves it too, but we didn’t get much chance to do anything, not with the storm. Just my luck, that it stops the very moment she goes home. But still, it’ll be fun to go out of doors. You could help me make a snowman, Jane.’
‘I could an’ all,’ Jane agreed. Jane was a nice girl, only six years Sara’s senior, but she had a good many jobs around the house which she had to see to before she could think of amusing her young charge and Sara got thoroughly sick of hanging around whilst the maid helped with the laundry, ran errands or toiled around the place with a brush and dustpan. But today, Sara thought happily, standing before the schoolroom fire and buttoning her woollen stockings on to her liberty bodice, they were to spend at least some time out of doors. Mr Cordwainer, seeing her disconsolately hanging about the hall when he left the house the previous day, had announced that she looked pale and that it would do her good to visit the park daily, until school started once more in ten days’ time.
‘Your life in the school holidays lacks purpose, Sara,’ he said severely, which Sara thought supremely unfair, since any purpose she had in mind was immediately squashed by either one or other of her parents. ‘You need employment – the devil finds mischief for idle hands, you know.’
But though it was a shame that he had managed to turn a treat – which was visiting the park – into a duty, Sara was still grateful to him. He took very little notice of her as a rule, now he had twice done something which had, in its way, made things easier for her. She still remembered his approval of Nanny, his making it plain that he thought she was in the right rather than his wife.
And today is sunny; we’ll have a really good time and Mother won’t be able to stop us by saying Jane has work to do, because Father’s orders are paramount, Sara thought gleefully, quoting, in her mind, the very words her mother used when it suited her to blame her husband for some irksome order or other. She fastened her back suspenders, not without difficulty, for they were small, fiddly things, straightened her skirt and was standing with one foot in a pom-pommed slipper and the other still clad only in a black woollen stocking, when the door opened and Jane came into the room. She was carrying a tray with Sara’s breakfast egg, a plateful of bread and butter and a mug of milk on it, and whilst she transferred the contents of the tray to the schoolroom table, she announced in a mournful voice that she would have to go downstairs at once, to see the missus.
‘Why, Jane?’ Sara asked idly, picking up her teaspoon and tapping the brown egg thoughtfully upon its bald cranium. ‘Does she want us to go shopping with her? Oh, don’t let’s! Father said I might play in the park, or – or go for walk by ourselves.’
‘It ain’t that, Miss Sara,’ Jane said unhappily. ‘My little brother Freddy just come to the back door. Mam’s been took bad, she’s in the Stanley ’ospital, they say it could be ’pendicitis. And if it is, someone’s gorra look after the littl’uns.’
‘Oh, I see,’ Sara said rather blankly. She had been really looking forward to getting out of the house for a while, but now she felt ashamed that she had never thought to ask Jane about her family, but the girl had only recently been promoted to take care of her, Phyllis having left for a livelier household with more children – and more money, she had told her charge. ‘Well, I’m awfully sorry your mother’s ill, Jane, but of course your first duty is to her. You’d best go off, then.’
And Jane, having set Sara’s breakfast down upon the table, promptly went, to return presently saying in a tone of hushed excitement: ‘Madam says I may go home and see how things are. I’ll not pack, since it may be a false alarm, but Madam says as how she’ll see to you this morning, Miss.’
‘That’s kind of her,’ Sara said glumly. She could imagine few worse fates than being ‘seen to’ by her mother on a snowy morning. ‘I hope you find your mother much better, Jane.’
‘Thank you, Miss,’ Jane said buoyantly. ‘Mind, a few days at home’s a bit of a treat . . . in a way, acourse,’ she added hastily, plainly feeling that she was being tactless in making such an admission. ‘It’s always nice to see me brothers and sisters.’
As she spoke she was taking her navy-blue coat and her matching hat with the pale green ribbon off the hook behind the nursery door and slipping them on. Sara could see that the maid was enjoying even the thought of going back to her home, and envied her. If only I had brothers and sisters, how pleasant being without Jane could be, she thought wistfully. There would be more than one, then, to plead with Mother and Father, or even to defy them! Perhaps a brother would always be able to get round Mother, like Christine Andrews says her brother can, or a sister could actually
enjoy
shopping, and do it instead of me. And then all the brothers and sisters could go to the park together, skate on the lake, make snowmen, have snow fights . . . we could do lots and lots of things. None of us would have to depend on a servant, because we’d have each other for company, and for taking care.
But it was not to be. I’m sure there are advantages in being an only child, Sara thought, picking up her spoon as Jane left the room. She eyed the egg broodingly for a moment, and then decapitated it with unnecessary violence. Off with your head, off with your head! But it was no use railing against fate; she was an only child, and a terribly lucky one, who ate three good meals a day, wore warm clothing and never had to dread the snow and frost.
Because Sara knew she would never forget Jess and the baby and the way Jess’s hand had stretched out and then tucked itself back into her jacket again. Mother said the poor begged for money instead of working for it. Sara knew, now, that in many cases that simply was not true. The poor would, for the most part, far rather work, but they didn’t have the chance. And dimly, somewhere in her mind, she knew that there was another unfairness; that many of the women living in Snowdrop Street, even those who loved their families, did not actually want fourteen or fifteen children. It was yet another of the strange penalties of being poor, she supposed.
But it was not something she could ask about, of course. Jane would blush and giggle and say she didn’t know she was sure, Nanny would tell her she’d understand when she was older, and Mother . . . well, she had no idea what Mother would say because Sara could never question her mother. Mother has no patience with children and precious little with grownups, Sara found herself thinking, and blushed. What a bad girl she was, to feel like that about her mother! I love her, of course I do, she told herself, sipping milk from her blue china mug. Only . . . she doesn’t like me very much at all, she’s never hugged me or given me a kiss and a cuddle in her life, which is why I’m more at home with Nanny than with her.
But being discontented with one’s lot was a sin, so being discontented with one’s mother must be even worse. When she comes up presently and tells me to put my nice coat and my best hat on, and my shiny black boots, so that she can take me off to Lewises and Blacklers and all the other big stores, I’ll try to look pleasant, Sara planned. And once we’re there we’ll go round and round the millinery departments and the fashion departments and look at dresses and hats and hats and dresses . . . and she’ll be horrified if I suggest that it might be fun to play in the snow for a little.
Sara finished her egg and had some marmalade on the bread and butter. Then she piled her dishes on the tray and set off for the kitchens, three floors below. Normally, Jane would have taken the tray down but since she was away, Sara reasoned, there would be a good deal of disorganisation downstairs. The Cordwainers did not believe in employing more servants than were absolutely necessary, which meant that when a maid was sick or absent or even on a day off, everyone else in the servants’ quarters had to work twice as hard.
She was on the ground floor and heading for the green baize door which led to the kitchens when her mother came out of the breakfast parlour, looking abstracted. ‘Ah, Sara,’ she said, peering at her daughter. ‘What on earth are you doing?’
She rarely wore her spectacles but was extremely shortsighted, Sara knew.
‘I’m taking my dishes down to the kitchen, Mother,’ Sara said dutifully, however. ‘Jane’s mother is ill – didn’t she tell you?’
‘Oh . . . yes, of course, I was forgetting. And what are you going to do with yourself this morning?’
Sara’s heart lifted. So it wasn’t to be a dreaded shopping expedition, then!
‘Well, Father said I was to go out, so I could go to the park with one of the maids, if one can be spared,’ she said, therefore. ‘Perhaps Ruby might enjoy a walk?’
But even the suggestion was enough to bring her mother’s thin brows together in an impatient frown.
‘Oh no, Sara. We pay the maids to work, not to enjoy walks,’ she said tartly. ‘Read a book, or – or do some sums.’
‘But that isn’t going out of doors, and Father said . . .’ Sara began, indignation taking the place of caution. Her mother, who had begun to move on towards the stairs, stopped short.
‘Oh, your father said so, did he? Well, I really can’t spare a maid and the snow’s far too thick anyway. You’ll simply have to content yourself with the schoolroom.’
Her foot was on the bottom stair. Sara raised her voice in a last desperate plea for understanding, perhaps even sympathy.
‘I
must
go out, Father said so! Oh, I wish Nanny was still here, she loves to walk in the park!’
Sara expected her mother to continue to climb the stairs, perhaps not even to answer her, so she was astonished when her mother whipped round, looking extremely cross.
‘Well, she isn’t. But if you’re so keen to see her I’ll get Robson to take you round there this afternoon. No, you can go this morning – why not? And I’ll tell Adolphus that you can stay there until Jane comes back. And no playing out in the street, do you understand me?’
Sara would have promised anything, done anything, but she knew the value of a bombardment of words. If she played her cards right she need not actually make any specific promises at all.
‘Oh, Mother, thank you,’ she said fervently. ‘I’ll do everything Nanny tells me and I’ll help her in the house, go shopping with her . . . I’ll be very, very good.’
‘I’ll order the car for eleven o’clock,’ her mother said, not bothering to reply. ‘And I’ll send for you as soon as Jane’s back. And if it isn’t convenient for Mrs Prescott she’ll have to bring you home herself,’ she added spitefully. ‘And pay for a taxi – unless she brings you on the tram, of course.’
‘Thank you, Mother,’ Sara said again. She did not add that she knew Nanny would have walked home with her if necessary, nor that Nanny would be delighted to have her as a guest. Her mother, she knew, was quite capable of suddenly deciding that it had not been a good idea after all, and sharply retracting her promise.
But nothing of the sort happened. Her mother climbed the stairs and vanished around the corner and Sara continued on down to the basement.
In the kitchen, her news was greeted with some relief.
‘It ain’t that we don’t want you, Miss Sara, but it’s awkward, wi’ Jane away,’ Bessie explained. ‘There’s so much work, see, and cartin’ your trays upstairs of a mornin’, lightin’ the schoolroom fire, makin’ you a luncheon . . . well, it’s all extra, when Jane’s off.’
‘I don’t mind at all, because I like being at Nanny’s so much,’ Sara said. ‘We have a lovely time, Nanny and me. Can I give you a hand with the washing-up, Bessie?’
‘It’s good of you, Miss, but I’ll do it in no time. You go up and pack yourself a bag,’ Bessie said diplomatically, clattering dishes. ‘And don’t forget to wear your wellington boots, acos the snow’s that thick you’ll be soaked, else.’
Sara agreed to do so and hurried back up the three flights of stairs once more, to the schoolroom high up under the eaves. She had never packed for herself before but could see no difficulty; she would just pack her nicest things and some play-clothes and then go and wait for Robson to bring the car round.