As it was I almost managed to hide from Grandmother. I was putting the oats and flour and bicarb in the larder for Mrs. Baker when I heard Grandmother come into the kitchen and speak to her. I shrank back into the larder but didn’t dare close the door in case she saw it move.
She passed by without looking in and went into the scullery, where she began talking to Jenny in a low voice that sent shivers down my spine. It was the voice she uses when she has something awful to say—that she has discovered you have broken a vase, or not gone to church, or done poorly in school. Jenny began to cry, and though I had a chance to close the larder door then, I didn‘t—I wanted to hear what they were saying. I crept closer to the open door and heard Grandmother say, “... wages until the end of the week, but you must pack your things now.” Then Jenny cried out and ran from the scullery up the stairs. Grandmother came out of the scullery, and there was I standing in the doorway, my pinafore covered in flour.
I was surprised when Grandmother then told me Jenny was ill, but indeed she had grown slow and fat these days, as if she had a blockage in her stomach. Perhaps she should be taking cod liver oil. Then Grandmother said she would have to leave because of it. I thought she must be terribly ill indeed but Grandmother wouldn’t say more about it.
Luckily Grandmother decided to go then, or I might have had a tedious afternoon with her all alone, as she said Mummy had gone to bed with a headache. I saw her to the door, and as she left she said I was to tell Mummy later that everything was sorted out satisfactorily. I knew better than to ask what she meant.
After she had gone I went downstairs again and asked Mrs. Baker instead. “Is Jenny going to leave us?”
There was a pause, then Mrs. Baker said, “I expect she will.”
“Is she very ill, then?”
“Ill? Is that what she’s calling it?”
There was a knock on the outside kitchen door. “Perhaps that’s Lavinia,” I said hopefully, and ran to the door.
“Don’t tell her any of this,” Mrs. Baker warned.
“Why not?”
Mrs. Baker sighed and shook her head. “Never mind. Tell her what you like. She’ll find out soon enough.”
It was Simon. He did not say hello; he never says hello. He stepped inside and looked around. “Where’s our Jenny? She upstairs?”
I glanced at Mrs. Baker, who was gathering up the bowl and sieve we had used for the bread. She frowned but did not answer.
“She’s ill,” I said. “She may have to go away.”
“She’s not ill,” Simon said. “She’s banged up.”
“Banged up—is that like knocking?” I asked uneasily. I hoped no one had hurt Jenny.
“Maude!” Mrs. Baker barked, and I jumped. She never shouted at me—only at the butcher’s boy if the meat was off, or the baker, who she once accused of using sawdust in his loaves. She turned to Simon. “Is it you been teaching her this filthy language? Look at her—she doesn’t even know what she’s saying. Shame on you, boy!”
Simon gave me a funny look. “Sorry,” he said. I nodded, though I didn’t really know what he was apologizing for. In many ways he knew so little—had never been to school, could barely read, and that learned from gravestones. Yet he clearly knew about things in the world that I had no notion of.
Simon turned to Mrs. Baker. “Is there any bread?”
“It’s in the oven, little beggar boy,” Mrs. Baker snapped. “You’ll have to wait.”
Simon just looked at her. He seemed not the least bothered that she had just called him a beggar. She sighed, then set down the bowl and sieve and went to the sideboard, where she found an end of a loaf. “Go and put some butter on it,” she said, handing it to him. “You know where it is.”
Simon disappeared into the larder.
“Make him a cup of tea, Maude,” she ordered, picking up her dishes again and heading for the scullery. “Just one sugar,” she added over her shoulder.
I gave him two sugars.
Simon had spread the bread with great hunks of butter, as if it were cheese. I watched him eat it at the table, his teeth carving rectangular grooves in the butter.
“Simon,” I whispered. “What does banged up mean?” It felt wicked saying the words, now that I knew they were shocking.
Simon shook his head. “Not for me to say. Best to ask your ma.”
I knew I never would.
Simon Field
The sody bread smells good, baking in the oven. I want to wait for it, but I know I was lucky to get anything at all from Mrs. Baker. She ain’t so generous with the bread as our Jenny is.
I want to see our Jenny. Maude thinks she’s in her room upstairs. So when I’ve finished the bread I pretend to leave, but don’t pull the back door closed. I wait and peek through the window till I see Maude and Mrs. B. go into the scullery together. Then I sneak back in real quiet and run up the stairs before anyone sees me.
I never been in the rest of the house. It’s big, with lots of stairs that I keep stopping on ‘cause there’s so much to see. On the walls there’s paintings and drawings of all sorts of things, buildings and people but mostly birds and flowers. Some of the birds I know from the cemetery, and some of the flowers too. They’re proper drawings, with all the bits of the plant as well as the flower. I seen a book of Mr. Jackson’s at the lodge with pictures like that.
The rugs on the stairs and in the hallways are mostly green, with some yellow and blue and red bits in a pattern. Each landing has a plant on it, them ones with long thin leaves what wave up and down as I go past. Our Jenny hates ‘em ’cause she has to clean all the little leaves and it takes so long. “No one asked me what plants they should have,” she said once. “Why don’t she get one of them aspidistras with a few big leaves that are easy to wash?”
I go on up until I’m on the top landing. There are two doors up there, both closed. I have to choose, so I open one and go in. It’s Maude’s room. I stand and look a long time. There’s so many toys and books, more than I ever seen in a room. There’s a whole shelf of dolls, all different sizes, and another shelf of games—boxes full of things, puzzles and such. There’s lots of shelves of books. There’s a brown-and-white hobby horse with a black leather saddle that moves back and forth on rollers. There’s a wood dollhouse with fancy furniture in all the rooms, miniature rugs and chairs and tables. There’s pictures on the walls of Maude’s room, children and dogs and cats, and something that looks like a map of the sky, with all the stars connected up with lines to make pictures like what I saw in the stars that cold night in the grave.
It’s toasty warm in the room—there’s a fireplace just had a fire burning, and a fender in front of it with clothes hanging on it to air. I want to stay here, but I can‘t—I has to find our Jenny.
I go out of the room and up to the other door and knock.
“Go away,” she says.
“It’s me, our Jenny.”
“Go away.”
I kneel down and look through the keyhole. Our Jenny’s lying on her bed, her hands tucked under her cheek. Her eyes are red but she’s not crying. Next to her is her corset. I can see the shape of her big belly under her skirt.
I go in anyway. She don’t shout at me, so I sit on a chair. There ain’t much in the room, just the chair and bed, a chamberpot and a bucket of coal, a green rug on the floor and a row of pegs with her clothes hanging on ‘em. On the window ledge are a couple of colored bottles, blue and green. The room is dark ’cause there’s only a little window what faces north over the street.
“Jenny, our Jenny,” I says, “what’re you going to do?”
“I dunno,” she says. “Go back to me mum, I suppose. I have to leave by the end of the day.”
“You should go to our ma—that’s what she does, delivers babies. Nellie off Leytonstone High Street, next to the Rose and Crown. Everybody knows her. Mind you, you should’ve gone to her earlier and she’d have got rid of it for you.”
“I couldn’t do that!” Our Jenny so
unds shocked.
“Why not? You don’t want it, do you?”
“It’s a sin. It’s murder!”
“But you sinned already, ain’t you? What difference does it make?”
She don’t answer, but shakes her head back and forth and brings her legs up so they’re curled round her belly. “Anyway, it’s too late,” she says. “The baby’s coming soon, and that’s that.” She starts to cry, big ugly sobs. I look round and see a brown knitted shawl on the chair. I put it over her.
“Oh God, what am I to do?” our Jenny cries. “Mum’ll kill me. I send her most of my pay—how’s she to get by without it?”
“You’ll have to get another job, and your ma can look after the baby.”
“But no one’ll hire me when they find out what’s happened. She’ll never give me a reference. This is the only job I’ve had. I need her reference.”
I think for a minute. “Mrs. C. will if you make her,” I say finally. I feel bad saying it, ‘cause I like Maude’s ma. I still remember how she smiled at me that day she wore the green dress.
Our Jenny looks up at me, curious now. “How do you mean?”
“You know something about her,” I say. “About her and Mr. Jackson meeting in the cemetery. You could say something about that.”
Our Jenny pushes herself up so that she’s sitting. “That’s wicked. Besides, there’s no sin in talk. All they did was talk. Didn’t they?”
I shrug.
She wipes her hair back from her face where it’s stuck to her cheeks. “What would I say?”
“Tell her you’ll tell her husband about her and Mr. Jackson meeting if she don’t give you a good reference.”
“Ooo, that is wicked.” Our Jenny thinks for a minute. Then she gets a funny look on her face, like a thief who’s just spotted an open window in a rich man’s house. “Maybe I could even keep my job. She’ll have to keep me on if I’m not to tell her husband.”
I feel sick when she says that. I like our Jenny but she’s greedy. “I dunno,” I say. “Our pa always says never ask for too much. Ask for just what you need or you mightn’t get any at all.”
“Yeh, and look where your pa’s got to—a gravedigger all his life,” our Jenny says.
“Don’t see as being a gravedigger’s any worse’n being a maid.”
“Anyway, get out with you. If I’m to talk to her I’d best try to get my corset back on.”
From the look on her face I know there’s nothing I can say will stop her. So I go out and down the stairs. I get to the next landing and there are four closed doors there. I listen for a minute but don’t hear no one. I never been in a house like this. Our ma and me sisters share a back-to-back, two rooms for the five of ‘em. Five or six families could live in this house. I look at the doors. They’re all oak, with brass handles shining—our Jenny’s been at ’em with the polish. I choose one and open it.
I heard about rooms like this but ain’t ever seen one. There’s tiles everywhere, white tiles on the floor and up the sides of the walls to just over my head. One row of the tiles at the top has flowers on ‘em, like tulips, red and green. There’s a big white bathtub, and a white sink, with the silver pipes and taps all scrubbed shiny by our Jenny. There’s big white towels hanging on a rack, and I touch one. Where I’ve touched it I leave a black mark and I feel bad ’cause it’s so clean in here otherwise.
In a little room off this one is a WC, white, too, with a seat made of mahogany, like some of the rich people’s coffins I see at the cemetery. I think of the privy and bucket me and our pa use, and it’s so different from this they don’t even seem like they’re meant for the same thing.
I go out and choose another door, to the room at the front of the house. The walls are yellow, and though it’s facing north, too, like our Jenny’s room, there’s two big windows, with balconies you can walk out on, and the light that comes in turns gold when it hits the walls. There’s two sofas pushed together to make an L, and shawls decorated with butterflies and flowers spread over ‘em. There’s a piano and little tables with books and magazines on ’em, and a sideboard with photographs on it, of her and Maude and Maude’s pa and some other people.
Then I hear our Jenny talking out on the landing. There ain’t time to get out of the room, and somehow I know she and Mrs. C. will come in here. I crouch down quick behind one of the sofas. If I was playing hidey-seek with my sisters that’s the first place they would look. But Jenny and Mrs. C. ain’t looking for me.
Jenny Whitby
For all my brave face to Simon, I was dreading talking to the missus. She ain’t been bad to me over the years, and I do know I’ve sinned. Nor did I like resorting to blackmail. But I need my place here—I need my wages. It felt like I’d been mopping a room and not been paying attention, and before you know it I was stuck in the corner with a wet floor all round me. I’d have to jump far to get free.
When I’d straightened my clothes and put on my cap and splashed water on my face, I went downstairs. As I got to the landing she came out of her bedroom, and I knew I had to do it then. I opened my mouth but before I could say a word she said, “Jenny, I would like to speak with you, please. Let’s go into the morning room.”
I followed her in. “Have a seat,” she said. I sat down on a sofa. I clean in here every day but I’d never sat down before. It’s a pretty room.
She went over to one of the windows and looked through the blinds. She was wearing a dress the color of bone, with a cameo pinned at her throat. The color don’t suit her—she looked tired and pale.
I swallowed ‘cause my throat was dry and I couldn’t speak yet. I hadn’t really thought what I was going to say.
But then it didn’t turn out like I thought it would. Not at all. Never in a million years would I have guessed what she was going to say.
She turned from the window. “I’m sorry to hear of your troubles, Jenny,” she said first. “And I’m sorry about the way Mrs. Coleman must have treated you. She can be very harsh.”
“She’s a bitch,” I said before I could stop myself. Saying that made it easier to go on. “Now I got something to say to you, ma‘am.”
“Please listen to me first. We might be able to help each other.”
“Me help you? I don’t think so, ma‘am. There’s nothing—”
“Jenny, I need your help.”
“You need me? After you toss me out in the street like a wore-out broom, after all I done for you and Miss Maude and Mr. Coleman, just because I—because I—” I couldn’t help it—I started to cry.
She let me cry awhile. Then she said something real quiet. I couldn’t hear it, and she had to say it again. “I share your predicament.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but the fancy word sounded serious enough that I stopped crying.
“It’s not so ... advanced,” she said. “And because of that I can still do something about it. But I don’t know where to go. I don’t know who to ask. I couldn’t possibly ask my friends. And so I’m asking you to help me by telling me where to go to ... do this. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
I looked at her, and I thought of the meals she’d missed, and the headaches she’d had, and the naps in the afternoon, and the private washing I hadn’t had to do for her for a couple months, and the penny dropped. I just hadn’t noticed ‘cause I’d had my own worries on my mind.
“Yes,” I said, quiet now. “I understand.”
“I don’t want to go anywhere where I’ll be known. It must be a place far away, but not too far that I couldn’t get there easily. Do you know where I can go?”
Now another penny dropped and I knew what she wanted from me. “It’s a sin,” I said.
She looked out of the window again. “That will be on my head, not yours.”
I let her wait. She was handing the blackmail to me on a silver plate, just like I bring in the post to her in this room each morning. I wouldn’t even have to say nothing about her and Mr. Jackson. Just as well, ‘cause I
hadn’t really known what they got up to—till now.
I knew why she was asking me now too. She thought she was getting rid of me anyway, so I’d never tell nobody. But there was a price to pay for keeping me quiet. That’s where the blackmail was.
“It’ll cost you,” I said.
“How much do you want?” She said it like she’d been expecting me to name a price. But I surprised her.
“My position here.”
She stared at me. “What if I gave you some money? For you and the baby, to keep you until you’ve found another position.”
“No.”
“I’d give you a good reference, of course. We wouldn’t have to mention the baby. We could come up with another reason for your leaving—that your mother was ill and you had to look after her.”
“Leave my mum out of this.”
“I’m not suggesting—”
“I want to stay here.”
“But ... what will I say to Mrs. Coleman? It was she who dismissed you. I can’t go back on her decision.” She sounded desperate.
“You’re the lady of the house, ma‘am. I expect you can do what you like. You done already anyway.”
She didn’t say nothing for a bit. The baby moved inside me—I could feel its little foot kicking.
“All right,” she said finally. “You can come back to your job once you’ve had the baby. But you must leave today, and you can’t bring the baby with you or have anyone bring it here to see you. You can see it Sundays.”
“And Saturday afternoons. I want Saturday afternoons free too.” I was surprised at myself—the success of the blackmail made me bold.
“All right, Saturday afternoons too. But you’re not to tell anyone about any of this or I will make sure your baby’s taken away from you. Are we clear about that?”
“Yes, ma‘am.” It was strange to hear her try to sound hard—she wasn’t much good at it.
“All right. Where am I to go, then?”
“Leytonstone,” I said. “To Nellie off the High Street, next to the Rose and Crown.”
I heard a noise behind my sofa then, and I knew someone was back there. She didn’t seem to notice, though—she was looking out of the window again. I glanced behind me and saw Simon crouched there. It didn’t surprise me that he was eavesdropping—just like the little rascal. He was staring at me all angry for mentioning his mum. I shrugged—what else could I say?