‘John - don’t - not yet!’
Constance followed him and stopped halfway down. At the bottom, in the narrow passageway, John was buttoning up his coat. Polly waited to hand him his hat. He took it and turned to smile up at Constance.
‘My dear, you can see that Uncle Walter is impatient to be gone.’
The front door was open and Walter Barton stood on the step. He wore a bowler hat and an overcoat with an astrakhan collar. He bent his head and a match flared as he lit a cigar, then, as he drew on it, he straightened up and looked out through the swirling snowflakes before turning and calling, ‘John, the cab has arrived.’
John hurried out to join him without looking back, and Constance sighed. She wished that he could have appeared more reluctant to leave her. She roused herself to call, ‘You haven’t told me what time you will-’
But Polly had closed the door behind him.
Constance wondered what she should do. How should she occupy herself until her husband came home? She could not return to the sewing room for John had locked it after them and taken the key. Mrs Edington had gone to her room and did not wish to be disturbed until tomorrow, and now Constance realized that she did not even know where she was going to sleep tonight.
Constance felt dangerously near to tears. This was not how she had expected to be treated on her wedding day.
Chapter Eight
‘Would you like me to show you around?’
Polly stood at the bottom of the stairs, peering up at her. The girl looked tired, exhausted even, but she was smiling. Her smile revealed large uneven teeth which, set in her long sallow face, made her look plain, even comical. But her light brown eyes were full of a lively intelligence. Constance guessed her to be no more than fourteen or fifteen.
‘I would like that. My husband seems to have forgotten that I am a stranger in this house.’
‘Don’t be hard on him. Master John would know that I’d look after you.’
Constance realized how critical she must have sounded. ‘Yes, I’m sure he did.’
She knew her voice was strained so she was not surprised when Polly hurried on in John’s defence, ‘Mr Barton shouldn’t have taken him off like that. It’s not fair on your wedding day, is it? Master John must be as upset as you are!’
‘I suppose so.’ But Constance thought disconsolately that John had seemed more upset because he had not been able to tell her all about his dressmaking plans rather than by the fact that he had to leave his bride on their wedding night.
‘I’ll show you upstairs first - where your clothes are and everything. Do you mind going on ahead? We don’t want to invite bad luck on your wedding day.’
‘That’s just a superstition about passing on the stairs, Polly.’
‘Mebbees, but I’m not going to risk it!’
The girl grinned and Constance couldn’t help smiling. ‘Very well.’
At the top, with the sewing room straight ahead, Polly excused herself and squeezed past on the first landing. Here the stairs turned back on themselves and only a short flight of three more steps took them to the narrow corridor that headed towards the front of the house again.
‘The door straight ahead of us leads to Mrs Edington’s room; you’ll see that in the morning. Master John’s room is next to his mother’s so’s he can hear her if she needs him during the night. But I suppose he’ll be sleeping in here now.’ The girl stopped at the third door, the one nearest to them, and smiled at Constance, her head cocked to one side and her eyes slyly curious.
She is wondering if I know what will happen in here tonight, Constance thought. Polly almost certainly does know, but she’s not sure about me. She doesn’t know whether I am a lady because I speak like one, or a servant because she has heard everything that has been said today.
‘Well, then, are you going to stand here all night?’ Her embarrassment made her sound brusque and she regretted the look of hurt surprise that replaced Polly’s smile.
The girl opened the door and stood aside so that Constance could enter first. A small fire glowed in the hearth. Points of warm light sparkled on the fender and on the brass bedstead. The curtains were still open but the sky outside was dark. It could be only early evening and yet it seemed as if the sun had never risen on this, her wedding day. In a recess on the fireside wall Constance saw there was a wardrobe.
‘I’ve hung your clothes up in there and your underwear is in the drawers at the bottom,’ Polly said. ‘Your nightdress is under your pillow.’
There was a mirror set into the door of the wardrobe. The glass reflected the pale mound of the eiderdown and, as her eyes grew accustomed to the flickering firelight, Constance turned to look at the bed. All the bedclothes were white - white pillowcases with frills of broderie anglaise and a white sheet turned down over a white eiderdown cover. White for purity.
‘That’s all new, all that bed linen. Master John chose it hisself—bought it at Bainbridge’s. It was delivered only three days ago and I’ve had the devil of a job getting it washed and dried and ironed in time!’
Constance knew this would be to remove the size, which gave a glassy slipperiness to new linen. She ran a hand over the cool coverlet, feeling the raised, silken stitches of the self-coloured embroidery. Polly was watching her action, grinning.
‘If I hadn’t softened the sheets up a little you’d have slid straight off the feather mattress on to the floor every time one of you turned over! I’ll light the lamp, shall I?’
She didn’t wait for a reply. First, she hurried over to close the curtains and then she came back to the fireplace and, stooping, took a spill from a jar on the floor beside the hearth. She held it into the flames until it flared into light, then she lit the overhead mantle.
As she raised her arms to perform this task, Constance caught the smell of stale sweat and saw the stains on her faded cotton dress. Yesterday I was wearing a dress not much better than that, she thought. Yesterday ... So much had happened since she had tossed her unwashed apron on to the kitchen table.
Polly raised the spill to her lips and blew out the flame, then nipped the smoking wick with her fingers before replacing it in the jar. ‘Look, there’s the night table.’ She pointed towards a marble-topped washstand in the other recess. On the stand there was a large basin and jug, a saucer with a tablet of soap in it and a pile of clean towels.
‘And here’s the jerry.’ She opened the door set below the marble top to reveal the chamber pot. ‘There’s a netty in the back yard, of course, but you won’t want to be nipping out there on a freezin’ cold night!’
‘Polly, thank you, but—’
‘I’ll show you the front parlour now, if you like. It’s a cosy little room. Master John told me that the two of you would have your supper there by the fire.’
‘I’ll come downstairs when I’m ready, but first of all I would like to wash. Would you bring me some hot water?’
‘Right oh!’
Polly took the water jug and hurried away. She did not shut the door and Constance closed it after her and leaned against it for a moment. She dropped her head into her hands. Polly’s chatter had wearied her. The girl had been friendly but polite at first, and then she had seemed to grow more unrestrained, less respectful. Is it something she senses about me? Constance wondered. Can she have guessed that the new Mrs Edington was little better than a skivvy until yesterday? Surely not. Constance raised her head and found herself staring at her work-roughened hands. She thrust them behind her.
It was obvious that Polly adored John, she had been so quick to defend him. But why should I be surprised? Constance thought. He is so handsome, so gentlemanly ...
Every Maiden’s Dream!
She smiled as she remembered a romantic novelette that she and Nella had giggled over by the light of one of their precious candles.
Isabelle had found a secret hoard of penny romances, stuffed at the back of the wardrobe when she had been cleaning Mrs Mortimer’s bedroom. She’d taken to surreptitiously borrowing one or two at a time and sharing them with Constance and Nella before replacing them and taking some more.
‘Fancy that great lump of sour lard reading romantic stories like this!’ Isabelle had exclaimed.
Nella’s eyes were huge. ‘Mrs Sowerby would hev a fit if she knew we was reading them. First of all, she doesn’t think servants, not even housekeepers, should hev any spare time and, secondly, if they hev, they ought to be reading the Bible!’
‘Perhaps Mrs Mortimer finds more comfort in these stories than she would in the Bible,’ Constance had said, but the other two had not known what she meant.
There was a knock at the door. Polly had returned. ‘Here’s your hot water,’ she called.
‘Put the jug down, Polly. Just leave it there, I’ll get it in a moment.’ She found she could not face the girl just yet.
‘Right oh.’
Constance gripped the door knob and leaned forward to listen to Polly’s footsteps receding. When she was sure Polly had gone, she opened the door and took up the jug of hot water. She poured the water into the flower-patterned basin; steam swirled about the surface before rising into the dark corners of the room. A moment later Constance had taken off her dress and taken a clean flannel and the bar of soap. She held it to her nostrils; it smelled of carnations.
The act of washing herself was soothing. She looked down into the water in the basin, now curdled with streaks of soap. Polly would bring her hot water whenever she wanted. She would never again have to creep down first thing in the morning to wash in icy water at the kitchen sink.
She picked up a towel. It was thick and soft, unlike the thin worn-out rags Mrs Sowerby had considered good enough for her servants. Until yesterday Constance had shared a freezing garret with poor, crippled Nella; tonight she would be sleeping in this warm, comfortable room with her husband.
John was so kind, so gentle, and they loved each other. When they were in each other’s arms she would be able to forget Gerald’s savagery, she was sure of it. Poor John. Why had she imagined that he had not been sorry to leave her? It wasn’t his fault that his uncle had insisted that he return with him to the office. If he had not expressed regret it must have been because Walter Barton was waiting and could hear what they were saying. Yes, that would be the reason ...
Constance buttoned up her dress and smoothed her hair. She opened the door and went back to pick up the basin. Then, smiling, she put it down again. Polly would come and get it. She felt more cheerful now. Surely it wouldn’t be long before John came home, and what had Uncle Walter said before he left? That she and John would have a supper ‘à
deux’?
Until then she would sit by the fire in the front parlour. Polly could bring her a cup of tea.
When the bell rang, Polly paused with her arms up to her elbows in the greasy dishwater and glanced round and up at the glass-fronted wooden box on the wall near the door. Huh! It hasn’t taken her long to settle in to her new way of life, she thought.
Walter Barton had had the system of bells installed in the modest house in Heaton so that his invalid sister could ring for help from whichever room she might be in. But it was not Mrs Edington who was demanding Polly’s presence now - or rather it was, but it was the new Mrs Edington, and the indicator showed that she had found her way to the front parlour.
Polly dried her hands on her pinny and hurried along the narrow passage to answer the summons. She gave a peremptory knock at the door and went straight in. Master John’s wife was standing by the window, gazing out into the street.
I don’t know what she’s looking at, Polly thought. There’s not much to get excited about round here and, besides, it’s dark.
Then it occurred to her that she might be looking for her bridegroom to come home and, in spite of everything, she felt sorry for her. Polly moved towards the window and she couldn’t help seeing how lonely the poor young woman looked as she gazed out into the swirling snow. It was wet, more like rain, Polly noticed. She hoped the damp wouldn’t bring on one of John’s mother’s bad coughing fits.
His new wife seemed to have only just realized that she was no longer alone and she turned to face her. For a moment she looked as she had when she had first arrived here earlier that day - unsure of herself, shy even - but the look vanished almost immediately.