A Little Death (19 page)

‘I don’t want his bloody champagne!’

I’d got my head in my hands—I was like an ostrich, hoping she wouldn’t see me, but by then I wasn’t ten feet away from her, and of course she did. ‘Bring some glasses, Ada. My dear brother is going to have a drink.’

Master Edmund shouted ‘No!’ so loud I nearly fell down the stairs.

Then Miss Georgina said to me, ‘I do hope you heard that, Ada. Apparently Edmund isn’t thirsty after all,’ and she smiled down at her feet as if she had a secret joke.

Well, Master Edmund could see she was mocking him and I thought Miss Georgina was going to get a real black eye, because he just exploded at her, ‘Listen to me, you little slut,’ like that, and put up his arm to hit her, but Mr. Booth got between them and grabbed hold of him.

‘Steady the Buffs,’ he said to Master Edmund. ‘No harm done. Let’s go upstairs and sit down, shall we?’

Master Edmund said, ‘I don’t want to sit down,’ but before he could get any further, Miss Georgina leaned
past Mr. Booth and took hold of Master Edmund’s arm.

‘You listen to me, Edmund. I’m going away next weekend. I’m going with Teddy. So what have you got to say about that?’ They were both shaking like leaves and before Master Edmund turned away from her, just in that little moment when they stared at each other, I could have sworn they looked frightened. Not angry, or triumphant, or what you’d expect; they both looked terrified.

Well, I didn’t know what that was all about, but if you’d seen the second thing I’m going to tell you, you wouldn’t have needed no tea-leaves to see what the future held. Mr. Booth didn’t seem one bit put off by Miss Georgina and Master Edmund quarrelling, he always arrived with a great fanfare to take Miss Georgina out somewhere. Some weeks we’d see him every single day and I don’t suppose there was anyone in the house who didn’t think there was something going on. Except Mr. James, that is, but he wasn’t there most of the time. Well, we may have been servants, but we weren’t born yesterday. Anyway, one afternoon Miss Georgina and Mr. Booth went for a walk in the garden, and one of the gardeners came rushing down and told me that Miss Georgina had been stung by a bee and I was to send something up immediately. Well, the man told me they were in the summerhouse, which was near the top of the garden, so I went straight up there with some blue to rub the place. When I got there the first thing I saw was Miss Georgina sitting with her leg propped up on Mr. Booth’s lap and her skirt hiked right up past the knee.

Well, I didn’t know where to put myself and the gardener must have been as put out as I was, because he took himself off pretty sharply. Miss Georgina was sitting
there with all her leg showing and she was practically sitting on Mr. Booth’s lap. I showed her the blue and she said, ‘Oh, Teddy can do it.’ I started to say, ‘Well, I don’t think that would be right, Miss Georgina,’ but she just looked at Mr. Booth and repeated, ‘You can rub my leg, can’t you, Teddy?’ At least he had the grace to look embarrassed. Well, I handed it over and then I thought: I don’t care, I’m not staying and watching this carry-on, so off I went. But I saw Mr. Booth put his hand on her leg and I didn’t like that at all. I couldn’t put that out of my mind for days, him touching her like that. It was horrible.

But the next thing that happened was worse. Two o’clock one morning, Miss Georgina’s maid, Miss Jones, came and woke me up. She was in a terrible state. ‘Miss Pepper, come quick! Mrs. Gresham’s dying!’ So we rushed down and there was Miss Georgina lying on the bathroom floor with all blood coming out. As soon as I saw her I knew she must have been going to have a baby. I didn’t know if it was like a wound or what it was, but I’d heard of women bleeding to death from trying to rid themselves of a baby. Well, I didn’t know if she’d done anything like that, but I didn’t want everyone woken up and knowing about it, so I said to Miss Jones, ‘We’ll have to manage this by ourselves.’ All I knew was, we must stop the blood. I’d no idea how to do it, but I sent her off for more towels and sat Miss Georgina up, so she was resting against the side of the bath, and then I got out the aspirin and gave her some of those with a drop of brandy.

Well, then poor Miss Jones rushed back and came a cropper on the wet floor: ‘Oh, my wrist, it’s gone!’ I was worried she’d woken Master Edmund, because he had the room just across, and I was so flustered I nearly gave her a slap. But I stopped myself. I just told her to keep
quiet and go and put new sheets on Miss Georgina’s bed, because that was all messed up from the blood.

I was frightened because Miss Georgina was still bleeding and I didn’t know what to do. When I bent down to ask her how she was feeling, she whispered: ‘Don’t leave me, Ada.’

I said, ‘Will you let me fetch the doctor?’

‘No, don’t go.’

I said, ‘Have you done something bad to yourself?’ because I thought the doctor would be able to tell if she’d done something like that and perhaps that was why she didn’t want to see him.

She said, ‘I haven’t done anything.’ She looked so weak and frail that I thought: Supposing she dies?

I said, ‘Will you give me your promise that you haven’t done something?’

‘I told you, I haven’t.’

‘So can I fetch the doctor now?’

I thought she was going to say no again, but she said, ‘Yes, but don’t leave me on my own.’

Well, we had to wait while Miss Jones sorted the bed out and I began to feel as if I was going to keel over myself, so I sat down beside Miss Georgina on the bathroom floor. It was a beautiful bathroom she had; Mr. James had it done out in green marble from Connemara. We sat there side by side on the floor; there was towels and mess everywhere and Miss Georgina looked dreadful. She asked me, would I talk to her. Well, I’d been along to the big Empire Exhibition, so I told her about that, about seeing Queen Mary’s dolls’ house. She said, ‘That’s nice,’ but in a bit of a mumble, and then she was quiet for a bit and I noticed her head had slipped off to one side and she made a sort of snoring sound, and I thought: She’s going to die. Then I didn’t really know what to do, so I pulled her up against me to
get a proper look at her. She had her eyes closed, and I remember looking at her eyelids. They were purple, with tiny veins, so delicate, and her face was stark white, and she seemed to me to be hardly breathing at all.

Now, as to what I felt… I was sorry for her, but—well, I’d be a liar if I didn’t tell you that it was sort of a relief that I felt, not gladness, but just somehow that a door that had been closed to me—well, it was coming open just a little crack. It sounds queer to say it, because that was my job, my life, and what else did I have to do? I didn’t have nowhere else to go, but I could sort of imagine this other life, not even what it was, but a sort of… a sort of freedom, perhaps, or power, I don’t know. I know it was a wicked thing to think, but I couldn’t help it, it just came rushing into my mind. I said, ‘Miss Georgina, do you know what happened to Master Freddie?’ I was holding up her chin so her face was pulled against mine, almost close enough for a kiss. I said, ‘There’s no one here but me, so you tell me what happened.’

She said, ‘Freddie,’ or I think that’s what she said, it was only a whisper.

I said, ‘Go on, you tell me, I won’t let on,’ and I gave her chin a little shake. She started mumbling again. ‘Louder, speak louder, I can’t hear you,’ and then I gave her a slap on the chin, just a tap to wake her up.

Then I heard her say what sounded like ‘my fault’.

‘What do you mean, it was your fault?’

‘Not my fault.’

‘What are you talking about? What wasn’t your fault?’

She said again, ‘Freddie,’ and that was all, because then I heard Miss Jones coming back, so I put my hand
over Miss Georgina’s mouth before she said anything else.

The two of us got Miss Georgina into bed and I saw there was a big mark on her chin where I’d held on to her. I didn’t want Miss Jones to see it so I said to her, ‘Go and tell Mr. Herbert to fetch the doctor for Miss Georgina, but don’t you say nothing more.’

When she’d gone, Miss Georgina’s eyes came open again. She stared at me for a moment as if she didn’t know who I was, then she said, ‘Don’t go, Ada, don’t leave me.’

‘I’ll be here, Miss Georgina, don’t you worry.’ I sat down by the bed. I didn’t look at her or anything. Didn’t want to. I’d wanted there to be a baby for so long, I should have been sad about it, but something told me it wasn’t Mr. James’s child. The whole thing felt dirty and wrong and I didn’t want anything to do with it. I said, ‘Did you know you were going to have a baby?’

‘Of course not.’ I didn’t believe her, but I didn’t say so.

I said, ‘I suppose there’s no point in my asking if we should send a telegram to Mr. James?’ Because he was away at the time, I think it was Scotland where he was, but I’m not sure.

Miss Georgina said, ‘Don’t tell Jimmy.’

‘He’ll have to know some time, Miss Georgina.’

‘Yes, but not now. I couldn’t bear it now.’ Well, I thought, it’s a shame you never thought of that before, isn’t it? But I never said.

Miss Georgina put out her hand to me. I didn’t want her to touch me so I moved my chair away from the bed a little. ‘Please, Ada.’

‘Please what?’

‘Don’t go.’

‘I’ve said, haven’t I? I’ll stay.’ As soon as I said that, my little feeling I had about freedom all flew away and that was it, back to normal.

Well, the doctor came and gave Miss Georgina something to make her go off to sleep. When he asked about the bruise on her face, I told him she’d fallen down. He took a look at Miss Jones’s wrist as well and told her to go down to the hospital in the morning to have it seen to. By the time he’d gone it was up like a football and the poor girl was as white as chalk, so I sent her off to bed with a mug of cocoa and then I had a terrible to-do with all the sheets and towels, trying to get them bundled away and everything tidy before any of the maids came down. It turned out that the wrist was broken. I said to her, ‘If anyone asks you how you did that, you say you slipped. You don’t have to say anything else.’ I sent her back to her mother for the rest of the week; I didn’t want the house turned upside down with everyone asking daft questions.

No one had told Mr. Booth, of course, and the next day, along he came. Miss Georgina was too poorly to see anyone so I packed him off again, but he sent round a van full of flowers, a whole florist’s shop by the looks of it, and I put them all in vases in her room, but after a few days she told me to get rid of them. Soon Mr. Booth was coming round every day, regular as clockwork, with his bottles. ‘Champagne! That’s what we need!’ From the way he went on, you’d never have known that Miss Georgina was ill at all. He’d go up to her room and play the gramophone all afternoon, but I noticed that he always left before Master Edmund came back from work.

If Miss Georgina remembered our conversation about Master Freddie, which I doubt, she never spoke of it. I was glad she didn’t, really, because I think she
was just confused in her mind and didn’t know what she was saying. I certainly couldn’t make any sense out of it. Anyway, what’s past is past, isn’t it? There’s nothing any of us can do about it now.

The doctor had told Miss Georgina that she had to stay in bed for a time, I forget how long, but it was quite a few weeks before she was really up and about again. Certainly she seemed just the same in her manner, but suddenly a lot of people started coming to the house, which they never had before, and there were a lot of noisy parties. I think many of the people who came weren’t particularly good sort of people. I thought at first they must be Mr. Booth’s friends, motor-racing people, but they weren’t, they were just people they’d met and Miss Georgina had invited them. I had the impression that quite a few of them didn’t really know Miss Georgina and Mr. Booth at all, let alone Mr. James, because all this used to happen when he was away. It was like running two separate households, really. As if Mr. Booth was master of the house when Mr. James wasn’t there, with Miss Georgina egging him on, of course. They were always having parties and never with any sort of notice. They’d go out in the evening and bring people back, whoever they could find. They’d have the gramophone with the music blaring out till all hours, and all the windows and doors open at the back with everyone dancing and a lot of silly stuff, pushing people into the pond and that sort of thing.

One of the guests fell out of an upstairs window. What he was doing up there I have no idea and I don’t want to. But it was one of the windows over where the scullery was, and one of the big sinks was by the window so if you were standing in front of it, you were facing a little bit of the garden at the back. Two of the girls were washing glasses when they heard a woman
screaming and suddenly this man fell right down past the window in front of them and went
wap!
on the grass. On his feet, would you believe it? He’d drunk so much that he was like a rag doll, which was just as well because if he’d been sober I should think he’d have broken his neck. And his hat came down with him. I remember that because he picked it up off the ground and raised it to the girls, and of course they screamed their silly heads off when they saw that. Well, Mr. Herbert and I went out to him and he kept raising his hat to us and saying he didn’t want to put us out. He seemed to think Mr. Herbert was a policeman, because he kept saying, ‘Don’t trouble yourself, officer, I can manage.’ In the end Mr. Herbert helped him to his car and he drove away. I did wonder if he got safe home, because we never saw him again. The girl who’d been up there with him came flying down the stairs half naked, screaming her head off. She must have seen him fall, but I don’t think she had the faintest idea what was going on. When she heard his car going off, she went running down the road after him, no hat or shoes or anything. We never saw her again, either.

A lot of that sort of behaviour went on, and Mr. Booth and his champagne were usually to be found in the middle of it. Needless to say, Lord Kellway and Miss Louisa never came to any of these parties and Master Edmund usually stayed away as well. I didn’t like it and neither did Mr. Herbert. He never said much, but it upset him—it upset all of us because it wasn’t respectful to Mr. James. Not only that, but all the maids would be grumbling because of the extra work they were put to, not to mention having to stay up half the night. Because most of those that called themselves guests were people who didn’t know any better; they gave themselves airs as if they were dukes and duchesses,
and treated us like dirt. One summer we got through three different cooks and of course it was a terrible upheaval each time. The last one, Mrs. Seddon, she stayed. I don’t know what I’d have done if she hadn’t. She did plain food, that’s what Mr. James liked, a good solid roast meal. She was a good sort, very patient—well, she had to be, to put up with all the carry-on as long as she did.