Folly (4 page)

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and spirits, of pipes and spat-out tobacco. Stools and tables were crammed in tight together under a low ceiling, making me wish hard for a meadow so I could take one breath that weren't poison.

They had four rooms upstairs to let, though only one or two were occupied most nights, the place being a little off the main road. It were mainly where the men of the village stopped by most evenings for a smoke, a pint of ale, and a bit of boasting or remorse. Margaret Huckle's dead husband had spent his waking hours and many coins in the very room where I now found myself each morning, yanking at the windows and propping open the door, begging a chill breeze to freshen air so thick you could chew it.

If Margaret Huckle looked like a potato, her sister, Fanny Forbes, had more of the rice pudding about her features: soft and speckled and bland. Billowy soft in the flesh, but rough and cranky in her disposition. The reason for her cloudy outlook were clear to all, and that reason were named Mr. Forbes. If he weren't belching, he were passing gas. If he weren't making fumes, he were touching his own self, and if he weren't fiddling under his apron while all the world watched, he were waiting to rub his sausagey fingers across someone else's backside.

I were at the Rogue and Scholar only sixty-seven days but it were enough to cry lakes full, missing my kidlings, enough to learn a new set of curse words I'd never heard till then, along with plenty of reasons to use them.

35

Enough so that I snatched the chance to escape when it appeared--in the fine, manly shape of Harry Bates. Not that I considered romance, him being old, near thirty years.

But if it weren't for Bates, sitting at the table in the kitchen at the Rogue and Scholar, with his boots off and his feet hooked up on a chair while he ate a bowl of Fat Pat's beef stew, well ... it'd be like a bedtime story, imagining what
might
have happened elsewise.

He winked at me while I filled his cup, me nearly pouring into his lap and him grinning like an alligator. I set about mopping up the splashes and he winked again, liking the disturbance.

"Mary!" Fat Pat just about walloped me with her voice alone. I jumped and teetered on my own feet, face as hot as a griddle while Bates laughed out loud, smacking his palm on the table.

"You, sir," said Fat Pat, threatening him with her spoon. "You leave the girl to do her work. Do you see she's half your age? And she's not much at the best of times, on her last warning with the missus."

"I was only hoping," he said, "as I'd find a clever girl in the house who could look in on my mistress up there in one of those rooms."

There were nothing so far to indicate that I might have a single clever bone in my body, so I knew from the start he were the flattering type.

"She's up there with a sickly baby," he went on.

36

"Mrs.--though not for long, I'll warrant--
Mrs
. Overly. Could you slip up there? Tell her Bates sent you."

I looked to Fat Pat and got a sigh and a nod. Mrs. Overly were in the so-called Victoria Room, it being the best and no one else looking for a bed at midday.

The baby's cries met me on the stairs. I tapped on the door but weren't surprised with no answer, the air being filled with caterwauling. I poked my head around the door, knowing it were rude, but better than hammering with my boot, which were what I'd need to do to be heard.

There sat the lady with her hands over her ears and tears pouring out of her eyes while the baby lay on the bed kicking like an upturned june bug, its face scrunched and red as an old berry. The noise--Lordy!--were enough to make your head split open. The lady, Mrs. Overly, jumped up and grabbed on me, pulling me to the bed.

"He's dying," she cried. "There is something terribly wrong!" She touched him with a dainty white finger and pulled back as his howling went up another note.

I gathered his fierce little body into my arms, while his fists and legs did battle. I wrapped the blanket tight to hold him still and pressed my humming lips to his throbbing temple, rubbing his back in firm circles.

I were tossed straight back to those nights with Nan, remembering how minutes would pass while I prayed for the shudder of peace. It took only a moment with this little one. He burped a burp so huge that the mother

37

squeaked and flung her fingers to her mouth, as if I'd forced out a demon. Then all were quiet, till he gurgled and tipped his face to look at me.

The mother's eyes were like candles in a cellar, beams of joy, despite the puffiness. "However did you do that? What was wrong with him?"

"It were only wind!" I said. "Do you not have a nursemaid?"

"We had one, but now ... We only need to get to London," she said. "Mama is hiring a new one for me...." She touched her baby's face, but did not try to take him back.

"I ... I shouldn't really tell a servant," she said. "But ... I've been ... I've been ... I was ...
married
!" Her voice cracked and tears came sniveling out all over again. "But I don't think I am anymore! Everything has turned ... dreadful."

She covered her eyes with her hands, crying away. I bounced the baby, who were now quite merry. Should I pat his mother too? I waited, and waggled him, and shortly she wiped her eyes.

"I'll be
fine
," she said, as if reminding herself. "I'll take the baby now."

When I tried to hand him over, he protested with a jerk and a sharp cry. The mother sank to the bed and wept in earnest.

Lordy
, I thought.
Mrs. Forbes'll have my hide
.

"I ... I ... I've never been alone with the baby yet!" she wailed. "Nurse Polley was with us from when he was

38

born. She took care of things, until she left.... It was such a scene you wouldn't believe! She said terrible things about ... well, that my husband ... oh, I shouldn't be telling you this!"

No, you most certainly shouldn't
.

"She called me ... a
ninny
!" She gulped. "She said that Harold was ... a lass ... lascivious cur, whatever that is, and that she wouldn't stay another minute...." She gripped the edge of the bed, stopping the shakes for a moment.

"I ... don't know what to do," she whispered. She looked up and remembered that I was holding her son. I offered him again, and again he clung to me.

"Oh, couldn't you just keep him?"

"I've got work, miss. Mrs. Forbes will be wondering."

"But I can't bear it if he cries again. I really can't. I shall run screaming from the room."

I believed her. But it weren't my business. A hundred tasks awaited me, with not one of them being to cuddle a miserable baby whose mother didn't know which end were leaking.

"He needs a change." My hand were now holding damp flannel.

Her eyes puzzled up and then widened. "Oh! Oh, dear! I don't ..." She looked vaguely about the room, spying her case, and faltering at once.

"A change?"

I were too familiar, I know, but my arms were tired

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from holding her child, cursed with a foolish mother. I laid him on the bed beside her, no matter that he puckered up and squawked.

"Miss, if you don't mind me saying, the baby has certain needs that you'll have to attend to. A clean, dry bottom is one of them."

"Oh, please!" She looked desperate. "Oh, please, I beg you! What is your name?" She fell to her knees and held on to my wrists as if I'd fly away, which I sorely wished I'd been capable of doing.

"Mary."

"Mary,
dear
Mary. Won't you please help me? I will pay you, I promise, more than your wages here. Find me a cloth for him and I'll give you ..." She looked about the room again and then to her own clothing. "I'll give you this lace handkerchief ... and five shillings and--"

"Miss, I don't think--"

"My name is Lucilla," she said. "Lucilla Overly. My father is Lord Sherman Allyn, the historian. You've heard of him?"

I had not, of course.

"And this baby is sure to die if you don't help me. We are supposed to be moving on from here in an hour or so, after the horses are fed and"--she barked a laugh that were not a pretty sound--"... and the baby has
rested
with me, that's what Bates said. That I should lie down to sleep!"

"Perhaps you should do that, miss." The baby's cries

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were gathering strength, so my suggestion were ridiculous and we both knew it. I picked him up, I couldn't not. As if I could leave Nan wailing or anyone else.

I tucked him into the bodice of my apron.

"May I use a stocking, miss?"

She rummaged in the case and found one. She watched while I strapped the baby more securely to my chest.

"I'll take him for one hour, miss, and you have your little lie-down. But he'll soon need feeding, too, won't he?"

She winced. "The wet nurse ... I didn't think ... I've stopped my own milk weeks ago."

I spun around and marched out the door. She were a certain danger to her own child.

In the hallway I could hear Mrs. Forbes calling up the back stairs, "Mary? Wherever is that lazy girl?
Mary?
"

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ELIZA 1877 Telling About Mary

Bates come in, smirking at Cook and Eliza. "You're looking at the hero of the day," he said, plucking up an apple from the bowl on the table and rubbing it to a shine on his sleeve.

"What's got you so pleased with yourself?" asked Mrs. Wiggins. "Did you collect poor Miss Lucilla from that husband we all knew was a brute?"

"I did. As well as her wretched baby, whose squawking never stopped from the front door in Waterford to the shack of a country inn where I performed my heroic act." His teeth bit into the apple with such a crunch Eliza could taste the juice herself.

"And what was that?" she asked. "Did you drown the brat?"

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"Eliza, you hush!" Mrs. Wiggins always scolded for disrespect, but it made Bates laugh so Eliza could not resist.

But this time, "No," with that smirk again. "I found a lass." If his mustache had been long enough, he'd have been twirling it. "'Hello?' I says to myself," said Bates. "'What we've got here is a damsel in distress....' Two damsels, really, with Miss L. on the one side and this baby-taming wench on the other. There's nothing like a damsel to turn a man into a hero, is there? So I brought her fine green eyes along to Neville Street."

Eliza swore she could almost see his trousers take shape in the front. But then he caught her eyes looking down there and he smirked extra, making a little thrust with his hips in a way Mrs. Wiggins wouldn't see. Eliza quick turned her face to peeling the apples and vowed to hate this girl, whoever she might be. Bates was a brute the way he played with her, but oh, what he could do with his hands in a dark place!

She wouldn't be the one to tell him all his fancy dancing was for naught.

"You're a little behind the news, Mr. Bates," said Mrs. Wiggins. "There's already a nursemaid in residence."

"And a sour cow she is too," muttered Eliza.

"Eliza Pigeon, you watch your sass."

"Oh no," said Bates. He dropped his apple core into the bin. "Who's she, then?"

"Her name," said Mrs. Wiggins, "is Miss Hollow. Miss Judith Hollow."

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Bates sat down and shot his eyes toward the ceiling, as if he could see straight through and up to where this
lass
of his was likely being tossed out the door.

Eliza's intention to despise Mary Finn was flummoxed when she finally come downstairs. Eliza saw a skimpy young thing, so fresh from the country you could smell the dung and the blossoms right off her. Carroty hair and eyes more the color of old parsley than real green. No tits to speak of, nothing for Bates to ogle, Eliza assured herself of that straightaway. Knowing how he liked an ample handful, she softened up considerable. She could do with the help, after all. She could put the new girl on laundry and save herself a parcel of neck pain. Oh, and potatoes, and donkeying, and water-lugging; all the meanest tasks were suddenly half the weight of yesterday.

So Eliza let herself be fooled in the beginning, she'd admit that. Mary had one of those faces they called
heart-shaped
in the penny novels, meaning to tell you
adorable
and
prettier-than-the-reader-could-ever-hope-to-be
. She tricked you just by tilting her showy-haired head, that she was a sweet girl. Well, Eliza soon learned, didn't she? The girl who plays the angel in the Christmas pageant might be making her only visit to church all year. Otherwise occupied, unless Eliza were mistaken.

So, this Mary Finn come down, looking like she'd been served porridge when she'd expected roast beef.