A Little Death (10 page)

The night before she left, we were sat up in the kitchen with our cocoa and Mrs. Mattie said to me, ‘I’ll tell you something, Ada. When I saw those children standing round Master Freddie and him bleeding on the ground like that, my first thought was it was a game gone wrong. Even when Miss Childers told me how they’d come there, I still thought they must have run away and left him, and only come back after, when Jenny fetched them. I didn’t know what to do… and the things Miss Georgina said to me.’ I asked her what they were, but she wouldn’t tell me, only that Miss Georgina said queer things. She said, ‘I never suspected it was Jenny till the policeman said it must be. Because it wasn’t like her, Ada. She was a gentle little soul.’ That was it, really, what she said. But I thought: Well, then, I wasn’t the only one.

Anyway, there I was, all on my own. Holding the baby, as they say. Mrs. Mattie said, ‘You’re a good girl, Ada, mind you take care of yourself.’ She looked across at the study window, where Mr. Lomax was, and she said, ‘There’s nothing to do for him, poor man, he’s beyond saving, but you look after Miss Georgina. She’s never had a chance, poor lamb.’ She said it like it was her own family, not her employer: ‘You look after her, Ada.’ We were both stood in the driveway with her trunk, waiting for the station cart and I was thinking: Oh, please don’t cry, whatever you do, don’t cry, because she was looking up at the house and I could see her eyes were a little bit pink. I knew that if she cried I
wouldn’t be able to stop myself. When the cart come, she reached out and touched my hand: ‘God bless you, Ada.’

I was blinking to stop the tears coming. It was a sunny day, so I told her, ‘The sun’s gone in my eyes.’

Then the horse started up and off she went to the station. I stood there till I couldn’t see the cart anymore and then I took myself back to the kitchen. I sat down beside a short little cupboard and rested my head and arms on the marble top because it was cool. That’s when I thought: I won’t ever get married. I knew it in my heart. I was only twenty-three. Not that I had time to sit and think about that or anything else, there was too much to do to try and look after the two of them. But don’t go thinking, oh, she sacrificed herself, or anything like that, because there wasn’t no Prince Charming knocking on my door. There were thousands during the Great War who lost the boys they were going to marry and they were the ones who made sacrifices, not me. I felt sorry for those poor girls, but by the time the war broke out I wasn’t a girl any more. My brother Charlie was killed on the Somme. He was twenty-nine and I’m five years older, almost to the day. Very young for a man to die, but a woman in her thirties, if she hadn’t got herself a husband by then, she was well and truly on the shelf and no chance that any man would take her off it, especially not in those times.

Anyway, you don’t want to go getting sentimental about me. But I swear it, you wouldn’t think it was possible that two people could live in the same house and never meet, yet that’s what happened with Mr. Lo-max and Miss Georgina. She must have been fifteen years old when Mrs. Mattie left and I never saw her from one day’s end to the next. She wouldn’t come near the kitchen, so I used to take her meals upstairs on a
tray. Half the time she wasn’t in her room, either, so I’d just leave the food there. She’d put the dishes back outside her door when she was done and I’d take them down with me when I went up with the next lot. She was like a wild thing, really, just left on her own apart from a woman that came in to give her a few lessons. Even when Master Edmund was home on his holidays Miss Georgina never came downstairs much. If there was something she wanted, it was always, ‘My sister says, please would you be kind enough…’ Master Edmund was a perfect gentleman, even then. He used to come and talk to me, I used to ask him about his school and he’d tell me stories about what they got up to. I enjoyed that. He had a very nice way with him, never made you feel uncomfortable. Unlike his sister. It’s a shame she couldn’t have been sent away to school too, but she might as well have been a cat for all the thought her father gave her.

But Miss Georgina was bound to get some funny ideas, really, living at Dennys all the time and scarcely meeting a soul from the outside world. I used to think: Whatever will become of her? She did used to get the odd letter from time to time, from Miss Louisa, but she never saw either of her cousins—their father wouldn’t let them come, even though Master Edmund and Master Roland went to the same school. In fact, I used to wonder if perhaps Miss Louisa sent Miss Georgina those letters in secret, without her father knowing. As for me, well, I’d have had a little chat with Miss Georgina every now and then, if she’d wanted it. But when I took the trays up to her I often had the idea that she was standing in the next room, waiting for me to leave. I didn’t have time for playing hide-and-seek so I never looked, but I’m sure that’s what she was up to.

Although I’ve known Miss Georgina almost all her
life, I’d never say I
knew
her, if you see what I mean. Some people are just more open—I don’t mean they tell you all their business, but… sometimes when you’re with them, well, the best way I can put it is: You can see into their heart. I’ll tell you who’s like that—Miss Louisa. Anyone can see what a good person she is and I’m sure that’s why Master Edmund loves her like he does. But Miss Georgina, I don’t believe even Master Edmund knows what she’s really like, not right inside. And Mr. James, he didn’t know her at all. Because she keeps everything locked away, all the secrets she’s got shut up inside, she won’t let nobody see. And she’s very clever when it comes to getting her own way, there’s no denying that. That’s why you don’t want to believe everything she says. She’s as cunning as a barrel-load of monkeys. She knew she could count on me, long before I knew it myself. She knew it and she used it, too, else why would I be sat here in this dingy old basement after all these years?

After Mrs. Mattie went, Mr. Lomax told me to make up a bed in the study for him and he never again went back upstairs. He was all taken up with the idea that he was being cheated in his business. He never stirred from his study and of course there was no telephone then, only letters, but he brooded and brooded, and he read every newspaper he could get his hands on. He was sure that there would be something in the papers about the cheating, but there never was. He sold the London house and we never had any visitors, only folk from the village, delivering. So it was just him and Miss Georgina, and Master Edmund when he came home for the holidays. And then there was me, and I had to do for all of them.

That was when Miss Georgina started to play her little games with the furniture, after Mrs. Mattie left.

She must have known that Mrs. Mattie wouldn’t have stood for it. What would happen was I’d go upstairs and I’d see a chair in the corridor outside Miss Georgina’s room, and I’d think, ‘Where did that come from?’ Because it hadn’t been there that morning. Her trick was to go round all the upstairs rooms, which were shut up with the dust sheets over, and anything that caught her eye, she’d have it out of there and put it in her room. She was like a magpie, the things she’d got hoarded up. I’d keep finding doors ajar where they shouldn’t be and I’d stick my head round, and sure enough, there were all the dust sheets pulled off in a heap and the pillows gone from the bed more than likely. Miss Georgina’s always liked pillows. Pillows and cushions, all over the floor, and she had bedspreads and shawls as well, draped all over the place. When I saw that film with Rudolph Valentino,
The Sheik
, it reminded me of Miss Georgina’s room how it looked then. It was downright dangerous, all that stuff lying there on the floor. If you didn’t break your neck on the shawls, you’d trip over a pile of books and come down wallop. But there was nothing I could do. She was in a fair way to being a young lady by that time and I didn’t have charge of her—Mr. Lomax had never said one word to me about her. Mind you, Mr. Lomax never said one word to me at all, not unless he wanted something, and then he’d just go roaring out, scaring me half to death.

When Mr. Lomax got really bad, he started to wear a silk scarf around his nose and mouth—it looked how they have it in films when they’re going to rob a train only of course they didn’t have the films then. First time I saw it, I said, ‘Is there anything wrong, sir?’ because I thought it must be the drains or something, but he started waving me away, and shouting about infections
and all sorts. ‘Get away from me!’ That’s what he kept saying: ‘Get away, I know your tricks. I know what you’re up to—keep away from me!’ Well, I don’t know what he was talking about, but it was all part of his hating women the way he did, I’m sure of that, and the alcohol made it worse, made him imagine all sorts of things that weren’t there. I suppose he must have thought an infection would come through his breathing, that was why he was wearing the scarf. After that, he always had the scarf round his neck and he used to put it over his face if he saw me. But I never said nothing. What could I say?

He’d never let me have this scarf off to wash it—oh, it was the most filthy old thing you’ve ever seen. You wouldn’t have used it to wrap a dead rat in. I don’t know why he bothered with it, because the two of them were so busy barricading themselves in with jumble that you could hardly get from one end of the house to the other. Things, things, things, everywhere! It was like a great river of rubbish flowing through the house, through the rooms, down the stairs… they both used to put things on the stairs. On the ends of the treads it started, next to the wall. Books, plates, trinkets, papers, bottles, gloves, letters, and I wasn’t let to move any of it. It drove me nearly mad, I can tell you! I think it was Miss Georgina started it, but then Mr. Lomax would do it too; some was his and some was hers. Then, of course, there’d be such a great pile grown up that something would slip and the whole lot would come sliding down and crash into the hall. That’s why I say it was like a river, more and more was added, so it had to burst out somewhere, like a flood.

It was like a parlour game for Miss Georgina—she’d even go lifting stuff from my room and adding it to one of her collections if I didn’t watch her. When Mrs. Mattie
left, I had moved downstairs into the housekeeper’s room, which was a hundred times better than my old room. But what was bad was that Miss Georgina knew where it was and she’d sneak in there while I was working. Sometimes I’d miss my hairbrush or something and then I’d find it perched on the top of a pile somewhere. Well, if I just took it back, she’d spot immediately that it was missing, goodness knows how, and she didn’t like that. She’d get upset and stop eating, or she wouldn’t dress herself properly, so I used to take the brush and show her, and say, ‘Please may I have it back?’ and that was all right—until the next time. Lucky for me I didn’t have a lot to miss. Odds and ends from the kitchen would go as well and that was worse, because I’d be cooking and put my hand out for a pan and—gone! I wish I had a penny for every time the food got spoiled while I went looking for one of the pots. Not that either of them ate anything. Miss Georgina’s never been what you’d call a big eater, she just picks, which is what comes of not having anyone to make her eat up.

Well, I soldiered on, but I can’t say I was happy, and I got into a bad habit of talking to myself, because I was lonely. You know, I used to think: I’m fed up with this, I’m leaving, but then I’d think, how can I? If I go, what becomes of them? Then I’d think of poor Mrs. Mattie and I’d stay. But I suppose I was just dreaming about leaving, if I’m honest, because I wouldn’t have known where to go or what to do. So I used to pray that Miss Georgina would get married. We never had any gentlemen visitors—or any other sort come to that—but I used to pray that somebody would come along. When Mr. James came, I thought that God had answered my prayers. But I tell you straight: If I’d known what would happen to poor Mr. James, I’d have kept those prayers to myself.

The troops used to call it Plug Street. There was a village and a wood, the proper name was Ploegsteert, not Plug Street at all, but no one could pronounce the foreign names. It was near Messines, near Wipers. One of our mines went off there this morning—thirty-eight years too late, imagine it! The 7th of June 1917. That’s when it should have gone. Twenty-one mine shafts they dug, stuffed with high explosives, dug right under the German lines. Took a year to dig. They were miners from Durham, and a lot of poor devils from the infantry carried out the earth they dug and got shelled for their pains. All the mines were detonated at once. They told us to evacuate our dugouts in case they collapsed; I was with some other men and we stood outside to watch. There was a great roar as the mines went up. The earth shook and shrugged, as if it was trying to throw us off its back, and several of our chaps were knocked off their feet. The Messines ridge started to heave as if it was coming to life and great lumps of earth the size of cottages were flung up in the air; fire was spewing out, and pillars of smoke went up and rolled outwards at the top, like umbrellas opening, and spread across the whole sky. Then every single gun opened up and the noise was solid; it seemed to fill the whole world. I remember being surprised that the Boche were shelling us back, which they were a bit, but most of them were
caught up in the conflagration, poor devils, so they never had a chance and those that weren’t were taken prisoner.

That was the first time I saw a tank. I’d read about them and heard about them, but I’d never seen one. Nowadays, everyone knows what a tank looks like, but it was marvellous to me to see this thing in action. I thought it looked like a giant tortoise. It would go for a bit, stop for a bit, and then the head would peer out and look around. What impressed me most was the way it would roll over everything in its path. Mud, ditches, wire, the lot, that was wonderful to me. Tanks were a great invention, a new weapon that was going to win us the war. The Germans hadn’t got any, that was the great thing about tanks, but they did in this last one, they had tanks then—
It’s no bloody good.
It’s the old whitewash again, I’m not thinking about the tanks at all, I’m thinking about Roland. Roland Arthur Lomax. I used to say that—repeat it—to myself. Roland Arthur Lomax. As if it was a magic spell. When I think about the Great War—about Roland—of course then one thinks about oneself, can’t keep away from it. And now all this time has passed and instead of thinking about it less, I think about it more. Think about all of it more.