Thornfield Hall (28 page)

I sat down abruptly. My little fit of temper had brought me more than I had dreamt of. How strange! I had planned, calculated and rehearsed with Grace. We had agonized over the actual amount of money, estimating how much we could hope for and how little we could manage on. All our heart searching had brought us to no final decision. We had hoped for ten thousand and thought we could manage on five. Who can put a price on justice? In the end my impromptu fit of pique had returned to Bertha more than we would dare to ask for. It was offered me on a platter like the head of John the Baptist.

‘Trust,' I told Mr Rochester. ‘A trust. That's the way to do it. Grace and I will be trustees for Bertha Mason. We will
run her home for her, nurse her if necessary and help her make decisions. As a woman of property she will no doubt be attractive to many gentlemen in need of an income but her special circumstances make it impossible for her to consider matrimony. I am sure you understand that, sir. As trustees we could prevent her fortune falling into the wrong hands. We have cared for her these ten years. You know we can be trusted. Those with fragile minds are easy prey for the unscrupulous. You didn't see what that Mrs Morgan did to her.'

He shook his head. ‘I was not thinking properly. I was mad with shame and despair.'

‘You are not the only one to blame. Bertha's family should have ensured that her fortune was better protected.'

‘They were putty in my father's hands. They did what he advised. And to my eternal shame, I did too. I was young, naive and foolish.'

It was good to hear him admit his part in the proceedings. Youth, greed and a tyrannical father make a powerful combination. There was one more important ingredient in the mix that he refrained from mentioning. Lust. How many unhappy marriages is it responsible for? It is the most forgivable of sins. Young blood runs hot.

I returned to the task in hand. ‘A trust,' I reminded him. ‘It is a job for a lawyer but it is easily done.' I admitted then that Grace and I had a draft document already drawn up. There were no names or figures, just gaps to be filled in. The lawyer lived at a distance and we had been anonymous clients. I would bring him the document and he could consult his own lawyer.

As I rose to leave, this time for real, he came and shook my hand and thanked me. He hoped that our talk would result in an increase in happiness for all involved. I could not help but agree with him.

As I opened the door to the corridor I encountered my failure – the one person I felt responsible for who had not featured in my talk with Mr Rochester. Martha. I had not managed to increase her happiness, her income or her security; she did not even exist as far as Mr Rochester was concerned. She was – or should be – an anonymous and invisible laundry maid. I scolded her for being near the library; she was supposed to keep to the back stairs. She had some excuse of course – she always had a pocketful of those. I took the time to move mentally some of the guilt I felt about her and place it squarely onto her own shoulders. I would do my best for her but at that moment I had not an inkling of an idea how to help her.

My most urgent need was to go to Grace and Bertha and tell them of the success of our mission. As I headed to the locked door at the foot of the stairs Martha dogged my footsteps. I did not listen as she rambled on, justifying herself. She had been trying to get up the attic to fetch the washing. It was very inconvenient not having a key. Could she have one? Definitely not.

I watched to make sure that Martha did indeed go up to the attic before I gave Grace and Bertha the good news. Bertha was tearful; seeing Mr Rochester always had a bad effect on her. We were full of praise for how well she had conducted herself at the meeting. Grace's eyes popped out like a frog when she heard how much money Mr Rochester had offered. The amount meant nothing to Bertha. Thirty thousand pounds or thirty pence – they were the same to her.

As a result of having very little and having to work for it Grace and I knew the value of money. The income from thirty thousand pounds would keep all three of us in considerable comfort. We would live like queens alongside Bertha, not as her servants, but as her guardians. I would become gentry again.
I need not fear so acutely sickness and old age and we could forget about the workhouse. We agreed that I should write to tell Grace's son immediately to put our plan in motion.

We told Grace's son to take up the lease on the house near Reading. It meant I would be living many miles from my native Yorkshire, which made me sad. It was the price I had to pay for a comfortable future for me and for Bertha leaving her past as far behind as possible. Grace was looking forward to being near her son. It was our intention to keep our destination secret and to say only that we would be living ‘to the south of Grimsby'. Bertha said she would live anywhere but hoped to find a place that was warmer than Yorkshire.

‘That won't be difficult,' Grace assured her.

When I left Grace and Bertha I hesitated at the foot of the stairs. I was not sure if Martha had come down from the attic; collecting the washing was a job she could spin out for hours. Serve her right, I thought as I locked the door. Later I found out that I had locked her in. As usual she turned my error into an excuse to avoid work. She spent the afternoon taking her ease on the four-poster bed and reading to Bertha.

A COUNTRY WEDDING

1832

M
R ROCHESTER WAS IN AN AGONY OF
impatience to be married. We saw him cross off the days on the calendar with mounting glee. First we servants had our own red-letter day on the calendar: the wedding of John and Leah. They chose to be married on a Wednesday as that was their half day. They asked me and Old John to be witnesses.

Unlike the general run of bridegrooms John grew calmer and happier the closer the wedding day came. Mr Rochester's agent had offered him the tenancy of a small farm about thirty miles away. If he made a success of it there were two more farms close by that might become available to him. I'd given a show of delighted surprise when Leah told me and said I thought she would make an excellent farmer's wife. They were keen to move to their new home as soon as possible so that their baby could be born there.

I wore my best black silk frock for the wedding and tried to spruce up Old John for the occasion – with limited success. Mr Wood made a point of briskly wafting the sleeves of his surplice to disperse the smell of horse that emanated from the
old coachman and pervaded the sanctity of the holy place. Once Old John had fulfilled his role of giving the bride away he was directed to sit in a distant pew. I felt my dislike of Mr Wood grow faster than bread dough as he gabbled impatiently through the wedding service, scarcely giving John time to make his vows.

The words ‘till death us do part' gave me pause for thought. I had said those words when I'd married my husband and I meant them at the time. Our years together had been too few to test my resolution. How would I have felt after twenty, thirty, forty years? How would I have felt if he had gone mad, or flogged me, or beaten our children? On reflection I decided that the terms of the marriage contract were spectacularly ferocious.

When Mr Wood warned that those whom God had joined no man should put asunder he failed to convince me. The promptness with which he let go of John's and Leah's hands, and the speed with which he turned on his heels and raced from the church, left me feeling that a bureaucratic procedure had been performed, not some miraculous transformation. The clerk, John Green, took over the congratulating of the happy couple and the completion of the marriage certificate. Mr Wood had left a blank one already signed for the purpose.

I watched as John and Leah kissed shyly in public for the first time. There was ample evidence as John leaned forward over Leah's stomach so as to reach her lips, that this was not their first contact; they had been busy in private. The words parroted by Mr Wood were no more than official recognition of an accomplished fact. John and Leah had made themselves one flesh months ago; the world was just catching up with them. This thought cheered me considerably. I felt much better about letting Mr Wood perform a bigamous marriage.

The wedding breakfast was to take place in the evening, when we could entrust Mr Rochester to the capable hands of
Miss Eyre. Before then I had to take tea with Miss Eyre and Adele. These were not always happy occasions. Jane was making enquiries about schools and Adele was fretting about her future. Miss Eyre could do little to reassure her; she did not think that dolls would be allowed, it was unlikely that pink frocks would conform to the regulations and as for taking your maid with you… That was unheard of!

I could find no words of comfort for Adele. Neither the presence of Sophie nor visits to Thornfield Hall could be promised as future compensation for her immediate suffering. Mr Rochester intended to leave the Hall immediately after his wedding, never to return. He planned to depart in his new coach with the last of the carriage horses. Old John and Mary would then retire with Mesrour to the manor house at Ferndean. John and Leah would take up the tenancy of their farm. Sam was keeping very quiet and Sophie was staying close to him. Knowing Sam I guessed he'd already got his hands on his sweetener, probably paid in bank notes by the agent with a nudge and wink. They would pretend it was for some disreputable bit of male high spirits that Mr Rochester was paying Sam to keep concealed from the bride.

Meanwhile Grace, Bertha and I waited for the papers to be signed and the thirty thousand pounds to be transferred to the trust. I could not think of leaving Thornfield Hall until I was happy about the arrangements for Adele. I suspected that I would be left to handle that painful procedure. Also I would have to close down the Hall. Perhaps even arrange for it to be sold.

Then there was the staff to be dealt with. Mary had taken to her bed with the rheumatics and I'd had to hire a temporary replacement. There were other new members of staff whom Mr Rochester had hired as part of his pretence of being enamoured
of Blanche. Sometimes I would go into the servants' hall at mealtimes and I would not recognize many of them. They would all have to be given notice and paid off and they would want references. I felt tired just thinking about the work ahead of me. Those were just my official duties. There was also my unofficial one to poor Martha.

The evening of John and Leah's marriage I put away all these worries and made merry in the servants' hall. Mary had struggled out of her bed to make desserts for the happy couple. The new cook had done them proud with a huge ham. I made sure there was enough ale for the men but not too much. We still had a secret to keep. I would have been more liberal if the trust papers had been signed and the money handed over. I lived in dread of the secret of Bertha's identity slipping out at the last moment. Drink loosens the tongue, especially the tongue of a bridegroom when his friends ply him with ale.

I never really looked at Martha, just as I never really listened to her. She contrived to irritate me so much that the less attention I paid her the better. That night at Leah's wedding feast I sat across the table from Martha. I saw only her head and shoulders and not her distracting bump of a belly. What I saw gave me a turn. Her face was swollen and discoloured; her whole head seemed to have grown several sizes larger. I thought she must have been drinking. I could scarcely blame her if she drank until she fell unconscious under the table; she must so wish to forget her circumstances. Perhaps her time was nearer than we thought. I knew the daft moppet had no dates to help her work out her probable time.

Old friends and new faces united to send Leah and John to their first shared room that night, with much coarse laughter and many rude jokes about shutting stable doors and all their troubles being little ones. This was the only part of the
celebrations that I kept aloof from; after all, I would be giving notice to most of them in the near future.

The atmosphere at the servants' early breakfast next day was very far from jolly. Leah's face was flushed and angry and Martha was in tears. A weeping Martha was nothing new but an angry Leah was something else. It transpired that Martha had burst in on the couple in the course of their wedding night. John and Leah had shooed her out and sent her back to her own room. Martha insisted she had no memory of the event. She had woken in her own bed and claimed to have stayed there. She was unaware of her nocturnal wanderings.

I took these night-time ramblings seriously. I could not risk her straying onto the second floor, perhaps even into Mr Rochester's or Miss Eyre's bedroom. So I persuaded Grace to let her sleep on the third storey in the room beyond hers. There we could keep her confined at night by locking the door at the foot of the stairs. It seemed to be fated that the third floor of Thornfield Hall was always to have an inhabitant with wild and uncontrolled ways. Now that Bertha was so well-behaved, Martha had taken on that role.

Grace reminded me to arrange for a midwife. She thought Martha might be due any time. The livid colour of the girl's face was not a good sign. Grace had seen swollen purple faces before and sometimes the ending was not happy. ‘Often the baby comes early but dies. Sometimes the mother dies. Sometimes she recovers afterwards. It is as though there is a battle between mother and baby—' Abruptly she stopped talking.

Martha had appeared with her empty clothes basket; she had been hanging clothes to dry in the attic. For a noisy galumphing creature she could slide quietly into earshot when you didn't want her.

I told her that I would send word to the midwife the next
day. Grace tapped her forehead. She had just remembered something. ‘When you do, ask her if she knows of anyone who is looking for a wet nurse.'

Martha squealed in protest at the words ‘wet nurse', her face twisted in a grimace of disgust. ‘You mean me! Me be a wet nurse! What a horrible idea. I'm not going to do that. Never, never, never.'