The Wet Nurse's Tale (14 page)

“Oh,” he said, smiling, “your master calls you, I hear.”

“Thank you again,” said I and he tipped his hat and went away.

I went back to the kitchen and took the baby from the cook. I noticed very quick that the room had come over quiet and I thought I knew why. Now, I have often thought that if you have a blister come upon your heel that is paining you very much, the best thing to do is to burst it yourself rather than wait for your rubbing shoe to do it for you. It will heal ever so much more quickly that way. I put a look on my face like I was much surprised and I said very clear, “Did you see that Jew on the stoop?”

There was a pause, and then they all sighed like as if they was relieved—the cook and Barbara and Lottie did.

“Only I saw him,” said Barbara, “but I told the others quick!”

“Barbara was funny, she was,” said Lottie, “in what she said to us. Do listen: she said, ‘Why, fancy, there’s a regular Mr. Disraeli on the back stoop!’ and then didn’t we all laugh!”

“What could such as he have wanted at a respectable house like we are?” said Cook to me, with cold eyes.

As ever, I thanked the Lord that He had made me a fast thinker. “Oh,” said I, “you will not be surprised. Do you recall that I had a tooth pulled some weeks ago? Yes, back here, see the hole? Well, he was the dentist and I owed him a shilling which I forgot to pay to him. Imagine, walking all this way for a shilling!”

“And on a Sunday!” said Barbara.

“But how did he know which house to come to?” said the cook, still wondering.

“Oh,” said I, “he made me tell him, when I was short the shilling, so he could come and get it, if he had to.”

“And so he did,” said the cook, finally satisfied, that bitch.

You will think it strange that I could like a man and speak so of him. But I thought it best that the other servants mind their own businesses and not my own. If they did not like a Jew or a monkey or a loaf of brown bread, I did not care a whit. I recalled to myself what Mr. Abrams had said to me the night I had supped with his family—that I was a person who liked a thing that was different, just for its being different. I liked very much that he noticed that about me.

And there was something more. All my life I have been a watcher. I watch, is what I do, and this is how I know how to act. And it seems to me that most others do not. They act first, and then they watch what happens to them with their mouths agape. But this watching habit of mine has set me apart from others: from my friends, from my family, from the other servants in whatever place I was in. And it seemed to me that this is the same thing that Mr. Abrams felt all the time. That feeling of being set apart. And that feeling is sometimes bad, but at other times, well, it may be very good indeed.

So you see, Reader, I thought I knew how Mr. Abrams felt about the world because I had oft felt the same. What I did not feel for him was pity. I only admired him. I did not like to hear the other servants speak badly about Mr. Abrams, who seemed to me a fine man and whose hair curled very nice. But it could do him little harm after all, and thus I thought it best to keep my own counsel.

I saw Mr. Abrams again only once before I left the Chandlers’ house. Mrs. Chandler wanted some fancy whale candles for her sitting room like they use in London, not tallow. I’d told Barbara that I’d seen some of the very same for sale at a good price, just in our talking together, and she told Mrs. Chandler and she said I should go and get them. As the babies had just gone down for their nap, I thought to go out quick and come back quick.

I walked to the candle stall and you have already guessed which neighborhood it was in, I daresay. In truth, servants like me who are hired for one particular thing and that thing only, did not see much of the town or country around the house we worked in. I did not often go on errands. It quite annoyed me, in fact, that I knew so little of Aubrey after having lived there for nigh on two years and more. But I did not. I knew but a few of the streets around the Holcombs’ house and a few more around the Chandlers’, and I had made myself familiar with the place the Jews lived, but that made the whole of my world in town. Twas all I knew.

So it was there I made my way. I went right to the candle stall and made my purchase and then, as I turned back for the Chandlers’ home, I saw Harry Abrams’s face in my view and he smiled at me.

“Good afternoon! I had begun to despair of seeing you ever again,” said he. “I said to my mother and my sister, just this morning at breakfast—say a prayer today, I told them, that Susan Rose’s tooth might hurt her and perhaps she’ll come for a visit.”

“How unkind,” said I with a smile, “for I am sure that without my teeth, I should very soon wither away.” Then I laughed at my joke for withering is not what you’d think I’d do soon, if you saw me. But he did not laugh and looked at me like I’d said a riddle that he could not solve.

“And what is it that brings you here to our neighborhood?”

I showed him the candles I had bought.

“But you may not tarry, then?” said he. “I had hoped that you might.”

“I may not, sir,” said I. “And you yourself; surely there are plenty of maws for you before supper?”

He sighed and ran his hand across his cheek. “Yes, there may yet be. But it is such a lovely day, is it not? It is a lovely day, Susan Rose, and you look very lovely in it,” said he which made me laugh and blush.

“Sir, I know how I look. You ought not tease.”

He looked at me a bit strange. “I believe you never saw a mirror, from your speeches. Why, you look no worse than any one of the ladies on this street and better than many.”

“What you say is the truth,” I laughed, looking around me at the people on the street. “It is truly as if I was a lone Gypsy who stumbled into a camp of them! Is that not funny? It is how that would look!”

Mr. Abrams stared at me. He could not understand me, I knew it, and I could barely understand myself.

“Forgive me,” said I. “My head is turned. I feel gay for the first time since my little child died.” And I smiled at him.

He smiled back and then his face changed. “Will you come with me, Susan Rose?” he asked with quite a sober look, and I knew that my strong feeling had charged him with his own, and I knew what he wanted and I wanted the same. And so I nodded. We walked a short distance to his house and went into the shed behind it which had a door that could be closed. Our embrace was tight enough that neither of us had breath to speak again for a good long while.

Twas soon after that that Mrs. Chandler spoke to me and said I might seek employment at the end of the same month we were in, that being October. I was surprised, just as I wished I would not be, because I thought I should stay with the Chandlers til the springtime.

“And the babies . . .” I began to ask.

“They shall be weaned,” she said.

“They’re young, though,” said I, quietly, “still not a year yet,” and she told me that she thought ten months to be quite enough at the breast and that now they could eat, it was time for them to drink from a cup. I waited to hear if she would ask me to stay on as a nurse—a dry nurse, my mother would have said—but she did not. Later, I heard from Alice that Mrs. Chandler’s sister would send her own children’s nurse from Durham, since she was done with her. I recalled to myself how Mrs. Chandler much better liked what she had when she knew that others had had it before, as when she found that I’d been a maid for the Bonneys.

I asked Mrs. Chandler if she knew of anyone who needed a wet nurse and she said she would inquire. When I asked again, she said that she had not heard of anyone who needed me, but I believe she never could recall to ask. I walked to the hospital one afternoon when Mrs. Chandler was out and paid a penny to have my name placed on a large board, near the front of the building with those of other wet nurses who sought employment. Indeed, someone sent a boy to ask, but when I went to call on the lady, she had already found another. Only one other sent for me, but that was the wife of a minister, who wanted to give her baby to nurse so that she could accompany her husband on his town missions better. She inquired quite close as to whether I had been married and told me that she could check if she was of a mind to, so I said I had not, and she said she would find a better girl. The skinny chit. I was surprised she could have ever had a baby herself, seeing as how it is you get one and I told her that, as I left the house.

I began to fret about not finding a place and so I went to the newspaper which was the
Aubrey Illustrated
, as it was called, and asked to place an advertisement. The man there told me I had to have an endorsement, and I asked him what that was, and he said I should get one from Dr. Sims at Highbridge. After spending a shilling, I was finally able to take a spot in the newspaper which said that if anyone needed a good and careful wet nurse with references, they should inquire of Dr. Sims and he would know how to find me.

I did finally find a place with a family that lived near Hittyfield, on the other side of Aubrey. This was a relief because twas nearly All Souls’ Day, and I had begun to think that I would have to go home to my parents if I could not find employment soon.

When I kissed the twins good-bye, I shed tears for them, for they were dear to me, though not mine. I have told you how it is with us who is paid nursing: our feelings go only so far and then no farther. But I am not a stone girl and those babes had carried me through a terrible sad time in my own life, to be sure, and that was Joey’s death. As I nursed baby Richard one last time, I thought that nursing the Chandler twins had dried me of my tears somewhat, for having a baby’s sweet face so close to your own, for so long a time as it takes to nurse ’em, is a great tonic for a sad soul. Indeed, I thought to myself looking down at the little boy, they nursed me from my distress as I nursed them for their health, and I will always love them for it.

The other servants could not spare time for much of an adieu; Mrs. Chandler had invited guests for another fancy supper for that evening. Indeed, the mistress had forgotten that I was to leave on that very day, and as the dry nurse had not yet arrived and the twins were fretful, all on top of the fancy supper, Mrs. Chandler became quite frantic and begged me to stay an extra day. I could not though, because I had promised the Clarkes, which was the name of the new family and I thought better to make the old angry than the new. Mrs. Chandler was quite furious at her plight and shouted at me but I simply bobbed and left, though I must say I smiled as I turned my back. She was not a good mistress nor either a good mother and I wish those mites the best with what they’ve got.

I made my way to Hittyfield to find the Clarke home, which I did, but only after being much turned about and lost. When I found it at last, I waited on the back stoop for ever so long before the door was opened by the cook, who looked frowsy with some worry of her own. She took me upstairs herself which I thought odd and I was shown to the master of the house. He had been drinking, I saw, but he said a few words and told me where to put my bundle. He took me then to a door and knocked and we went in.

It was very dark and close and smelt of sickness.

“The nurse is here,” said Mr. Clarke to his wife. He went into the room and motioned me to follow and he showed me to his wife, who looked at me from her bed, but did not speak. I bobbed at her but she did not see much, I could tell. I heard the baby in its cradle make a mewl and as no one said any word, I walked over to it and picked it up. It was very tiny, born too soon, I thought, and it did not look as if it would last.

“Shall I try here?” said I, and Mr. Clarke just nodded. He gazed at his wife but did not look at the baby. I sat in a chair and turned away from what he could see, though he did not look, and undid my buttons and my shift and gave the baby to suck. It hardly could. It was too small to know how, I thought. I squeezed a drop of milk into its little mouth and it tasted it and then tried again, very weakly, to suckle. Of a sudden, my milk let down and spilled into the tiny mite’s throat and it coughed.

At that, the mother raised her head and murmured something to her husband, who said something back but I could not hear what it was. I saw he did not touch her but stood at her bedside for some time before he left the room.