Never Look Back (11 page)

‘Maybe I could bring the book with me one day and read some of it to you,’ she said. Her father could read a few simple words and sign his own name, but that was the extent of his schooling.

‘That’d be grand,’ he said, his eyes sparkling. ‘But it’s time you went now, you’ve got a long walk and I’ve got to get back to the river.’

He walked part of the way with her, she looked so pretty he was afraid for her walking the streets alone.

‘Give Luke and George my love,’ she said as they parted just before Camden Town. ‘Could you get ’em to come an’ all next week?’

‘I’ll try,’ he replied, without much conviction. ‘Now, go straight back. No loitering.’

She kissed him and clung to him for a moment, breathing in that familiar and comforting smell she’d grown up with. She might find living in the parsonage more pleasant than Finders Court, it was good to feel she’d taken a step up the ladder, but if her father asked her to come back home because he needed her, she knew she wouldn’t hesitate.

‘I love you, Father,’ she whispered. She had never said that to him before, but perhaps she had to leave him to see it for herself.

‘I love you too, Matty,’ he whispered back. ‘And I’m so very proud of you an’ all. Now, skip off ’ome and keep yer nose clean, along wif that silver they gets you to polish. Who knows, you might end up owning some of yer own one day’

It was on a sultry night in August five months after Matilda started work at the parsonage that she heard a frenzied shriek from Lily. Giles had been out all evening, so Matilda and Lily had said their customary prayers at half past nine alone, and then Matilda had come up to bed, leaving the older woman reading in the parlour.

Imagining that someone had broken into the house and was
now hurting her mistress, Matilda leaped out of bed and rushed out on to the landing. But on hearing Giles’s deep voice she faltered at the top of the stairs, shocked to think they could fight like her old neighbours.

There was no fresh air anywhere. All the upstairs windows were wide open, but no cooling breeze was coming in, only bad smells from the drains. It was almost like being back in Finders Court except there was no noise outside.

It hadn’t rained for over four weeks, and each day it had grown steadily hotter. The milk had to be boiled so it wouldn’t go bad, butter turned to oil and Lily was so suspicious of fish and meat now that they’d been eating only vegetables and eggs for the past week. Not that anyone wanted to eat much. Tabitha was sickly and listless, Lily looked close to fainting all the time, even Aggie who rarely complained said she didn’t think she could bear the heat in the kitchen much longer.

When news of a cholera epidemic in Seven Dials reached the neighbours’ ears, most of them packed up and went out to friends and relatives in the country. Lily implored her husband to let her and Tabitha go down to Bath to her uncle’s home, but he said it was her duty to stay here.

At first Matilda thought this was what the row was about, for she heard Lily shout out, ‘You are being so selfish, Giles. Have you thought what might happen to Tabby?’

It was hard to catch Giles’s reply, but it sounded like ‘Why should anything happen to her there that wouldn’t happen here?’

Lily’s reply was very strange. ‘There’s savages there. They scalp people, and all those foreigners and convicts too.’

Matilda didn’t think they could be talking about Bath, from what she’d heard about that place it was very calm and elegant. She moved away from the top of the stairs, but hung over the banisters on the landing to listen.

‘New York doesn’t have any savages,’ Giles said in a strained, weary voice. ‘And they stopped transporting convicts there some years ago. As for foreigners, London is full of them too.’

It was only two days ago that Matilda learned New York was a city in America. She had been dusting in the study where a book lay open on the desk. A picture of a steamship caught her eye, and as all sailing craft interested her, she took a closer
look. Beneath the picture it said, ‘The
Great Western
steamship designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, setting out from Liverpool to New York’.

‘But I couldn’t bear it,’ Lily cried out. ‘Are you really so cruel, Giles, that you’d uproot your wife and child from our comfortable home and force us to follow your whim?’

‘May I remind you, Lily, that I am God’s servant,’ he said in an icy voice. ‘If it is His will that I must take his word to America then it is no whim, I am duty bound to go. If you believe that to be cruel because you are bound by the comfort of this house, then all I can say, Lily, is that you are not a fitting wife for a clergyman.’

Matilda could hardly believe what she was hearing. Until tonight she had only heard Giles speak to his wife with gentleness. But even through her astonishment at his harsh tone, and the subject they were speaking of, she couldn’t help but wonder where this left her.

The parlour door was suddenly slammed shut, and thinking Lily was about to rush upstairs to her bedroom, Matilda fled back to her bed.

Lily didn’t come upstairs, and as the house was suddenly silent again, Matilda realized that they must both still be in the parlour and had shut the windows for fear of someone overhearing them.

Panic overwhelmed her as she lay there in the dark. If the Milsons were going to America, what would happen to her?

In five months she had achieved so much. Lily no longer criticized her table manners, and only occasionally did she pull her up on her speech. She could bake pies – Aggie said her pastry was as light as her own – make a cake, she could sew almost as neatly as her mistress and she’d read dozens of books. With all those accomplishments she could almost certainly get another position, but she had grown to love Tabitha as if she were her own child.

She had won Lily’s trust when Tabby had croup and she stayed up night after night attending to her. She’d got the child to eat well, taught her nursery rhymes and some of the letters of the alphabet. Tabby loved her back too, they were as comfortable and happy together as if they were related. Could Giles really
be so unkind as just to show her the door without any thought for the growing bond between them?

Aggie had curtly told her many times how lucky she was. She said that in most households the nursemaid was on the same level as a scullery maid, while she was treated almost like a relative. Matilda knew this was true – she ate with her employers, had the run of the house, she could read their books and sit out in their garden. Lily even confided in her sometimes, particularly about Tabitha.

She wept then. Finders Court had become a hazy memory, just as hunger, cold and being dirty had. Was she pulled out of all that just to be shoved back in there again?

Lily stayed in her room the following morning. When she hadn’t appeared by the time Aggie had prepared breakfast, Matilda took Tabitha into the dining-room. Giles was there alone.

‘Good morning, sir,’ she said. It was even hotter than the previous day. Aggie had opened the windows wide as soon as she’d come in, but there was no early morning breeze to banish the smell of the drains.

‘Mrs Milson is a little unwell,’ he said, his face stern and unsmiling. ‘After you’ve finished your breakfast you can take a tray up to her. I shall be out all day today. Try and keep Tabby quiet so Mrs Milson can rest.’

Matilda knew by his expression that he wasn’t going to make any conversation. She sat Tabitha on her chair, fastened a napkin around her neck and put her bowl of bread and milk in front of her.

‘Don’t want that,’ Tabitha said churlishly, pushing it away.

‘You will eat it,’ Matilda replied, putting it back in front of her. ‘If you don’t you’ll get nothing else.’

Matilda sensed that Giles was looking at her. She willed Tabitha not to make a scene today, she was tired and drained after having spent most of the night awake. Refusing to give the child any alternative had been the way she’d got her to eat; mostly if Matilda was firm enough she buckled down eventually and ate what was put in front of her.

‘Don’t want it,’ she said, pushing it away again, but this time she pushed it so hard the dish toppled and spilt the contents on the tablecloth.

‘Naughty girl,’ Matilda exclaimed, scraping it back into the
bowl. ‘Look at the mess you’ve made on the cloth. You deserve a spanking.’

‘Don’t you ever threaten violence to my daughter,’ Giles burst out. ‘Lift a finger to her and you’ll be out of this house immediately.’

‘Looks like I’ll be out on me ear anyway,’ she retorted, shocked by his unexpected ferocity.

As soon as the words were out she wanted to claw them back. Being insolent was something neither of the Milsons tolerated, and what’s more she’d let slip she’d been eavesdropping.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she said quickly, blushing furiously. ‘I never thought what I was saying. ‘Course I wouldn’t smack Tabby, it were just said hasty like because I was cross. I didn’t mean to listen to what you and Madam was saying last night either, but I couldn’t help it, your voices were so loud.’

There was a hostile silence for a few moments, and Tabitha used the opportunity to push the bread and milk even further away.

‘It’s too hot for her to eat that,’ Giles said eventually, and taking a piece of bread he spread it with butter and honey, cutting it into tiny pieces for her. ‘There, Tabby, eat this,’ he said, standing up to put the plate in front of her.

‘Why would you think you’d be “out on your ear”, when we go to America?’ he asked with a touch of sarcasm once Tabitha had begun to eat the bread. ‘Don’t you have any faith in me, Matilda?’

She hung her head, ashamed of herself. ‘Well, the new parson here might not need a nursemaid,’ she said meekly.

‘That’s very true, but I would find you another job.’

Matilda knew her fears to be of little importance, but she felt a need to explain them. ‘But it’s Tabby, sir, I really love her and I think she loves me an’ all. Nobody else is going to be as nice as you and Madam either. Are they?’

Giles hardly knew what to say. Matilda was an enigma. She’d come from the gutter but she had the pride of a duchess. In the five months she’d been here, she’d managed to speak better, develop ladylike manners and learn a host of new skills, but she hadn’t really grasped that servants were supposed to be subservient.

She had opinions she aired, she had ideas of her own. ‘Self-assured’
was how Lily described her, and she had come to depend on Matilda’s sound judgement. When Tabitha had croup it was Matilda who knew to hold her near a steaming kettle. She knew to wash a sticky eye with salt water, and refused to let Lily dose her child with a patent cough mixture because she said it had dangerous things in it. She was right, it transpired later when a doctor friend admitted it contained laudanum.

The truth of the matter was, Matilda was invaluable. If Lily was called away, she had no fears that her child would be neglected in her absence. It was entirely true that Tabitha loved her too, indeed she would often run to her in preference to her mama. Matilda was a good influence on the child too, patient, caring but very firm. Wilful Tabitha got away with far less with her than she did with her parents.

Yet it was Matilda’s remark that nobody else was going to be as nice as them that struck him most. However hard he looked for a position for her, he knew only too well he couldn’t promise she would get the same treatment she did here. The reality was that she would be overworked, treated like dirt beneath her employers’ feet and never valued. That really saddened him because he knew young Matilda wouldn’t keep her lips buttoned if things went badly.

‘Nothing is settled yet,’ he said, and knew he was a coward because he couldn’t admit to her or his wife that he was dead set on going. ‘So don’t go worrying your head about “maybes”.’

Matilda just looked at him, clear blue eyes unwavering and all-seeing. ‘You are going, sir, I knew that last night when I heard you talking,’ she said, her voice calm and measured. ‘So maybe you’d better take me along too, because Madam won’t be able to cope alone with Tabby in a strange country, and that means you won’t be able to give your time to others.’

Giles knew any other employer would slap a servant down for such impudence, but he couldn’t. Her eyes held no guile, her voice contained no malice or threat. She was speaking the truth.

‘That’s for me to decide,’ he said sharply, getting up from the table. ‘You are getting above yourself, Matilda.’

‘I’m sorry, sir.’ She dropped her eyes from his in an effort to look demure.

Giles left the room quickly. He’d thought when Matilda saved Tabby’s life that it was the hand of God, now he was certain. His
wife thought him cruel, his friends thought him mad, but this young girl was offering him blind allegiance because she’d come to care for him and his family. The truth of the matter was that this girl was exceptional in every way. She had brought peace and sunshine into the parsonage, calmed Lily’s nervous disposition, indeed her presence was beneficial to the happiness and security of the whole family.

He would be a fool not to take her with them.

Chapter Three

‘That’s it, over there,’ Lucas said, leaning on his oars for a moment to point out a cottage on the opposite bank of the Thames, some 400 yards ahead. ‘And if I ain’t much mistaken that’s Dolly coming out to meet us!’

Matilda turned in her seat in the bows to look, and to her delight, her father’s new home was even prettier than he’d described. It was white-painted clapboard with a thatched roof, the large garden sloping right down to the river. They were still too far away for her to see Dolly distinctly, yet the welcoming way she was rushing down towards the landing stage, merrily waving both arms, made Matilda’s heart leap with joy for her father.

It was early January, bitterly cold with a stiff wind whipping up the water, and it had been a long ride from Chelsea where her father had picked her up. Matilda withdrew one hand from the new shawl the Milsons had given her for Christmas, waved back, then quickly tucked it back inside. The Milsons had given her two days’ holiday so she could visit her father and meet his new woman. Yet the sparkle in her eyes and the roses in her cheeks were not entirely due to the cold or excitement at seeing her father. She was bursting with momentous news, but she felt she must hold it back and wait for an appropriate time to break it to him.