Legacy of Secrets (38 page)

“Lily.” She glanced nervously at the girl. “I’ve never done this before. What’s it like being a maid?”

“Sure and it’s not too bad. You have a roof over your head and decent food in your belly. Mrs. Janssen’s an old tyrant, but they say all housekeepers give themselves airs. And o’ course she’s not from the old country. She’s Swedish and she thinks she’s better than we are. And she’s right, because she’s the boss and we all work for her.”

She shepherded Lily through a dark corridor into a servants’ hall, and said, “The mistress of the house is so high and mighty y’hardly dares to look at her. Keep out of the mistress’s way and in Mrs. Janssen’s good books and you’ll be all right. There’s four of us,” she added. “I’m the kitchen maid, and there’s the parlormaid and the upstairs maid, they’ve got the best jobs. And you’ll be the ‘general,’ which means you get to do everybody else’s dirty work, scrubbing the pans and the floors and steps, and helping with the laundry. It’s hard work,” she added with a sympathetic sigh.

Lily’s heart sank as she watched Kathleen go off in search of Mrs. Janssen. She had imagined herself carrying in trays of tea and dusting and maybe arranging flowers, not scrubbing steps. Kathleen returned. “Herself will see
you now,” she said, shepherding her to the housekeeper’s sitting room.

Mrs. Janssen was white-haired and red-faced and Lily could tell from her piercing stare that she did not like her. “Whatever does that woman at the agency think she’s doing sending me a frail creature like you,” she cried exasperatedly. “Surely with all the Irish in Boston she could have come up with something better!” Lily shriveled under her angry gaze. She had no answer and Mrs. Janssen said grimly, “If we were not in dire need I would send you right back to her, but you’d better start immediately. There’s a dinner party for thirty tonight and Cook needs all the help she can get. And you had better be a hard worker, girl, or you’ll be out on your ear.”

Lily remembered Mrs. Richardson’s words of warning and with her eyes carefully lowered she muttered, “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am,” and she followed Kathleen back into the corridor and up endless flights of bare wooden stairs to the attics under the mansard roof.

Even though the tiny dormer windows were wide open, the attics shimmered with a breathless heat that had them gasping and clutching their throats for air. “ ’Tis no better at night neither,” Kathleen said, fanning herself. “The heat gathers itself up here, and here it stays. And in winter you’ll be breaking the ice. You can hear the steam heating chugging away down below but there’s niver a blast of it reaches here.” She sighed, mopping her brow. “It just seems we can niver win,” she said, resignedly accepting her lot.

There were five flimsily partitioned cubicles for the servants under the mansard roof and Lily’s was no different from the rest: a splintery wooden floor, a black iron bed, a pine nightstand with a cheap washbasin and jug and a square of unframed mirror over it. There was a battered chest of drawers and a brass peg on the wall.

“At least there’s a mattress,” Kathleen said, looking at Lily’s glum face, “though sometimes I think it’s stuffed with gravel, it’s so lumpy. Not that we get much time for
sleep anyway. But you’d better hurry or Cook’ll have yer guts for garters.”

Lily dumped her basket quickly onto the bed. She smoothed down the dead woman’s gray dress and tightened the ribbon holding back her hair. Kathleen smiled encouragingly at her. “It’ll be all right once you get used to it,” she said, whisking her back down the stairs to the kitchen.

Cook was standing at the scrubbed pine table busily mixing something in a bowl. She was big and dark-haired with brawny arms, fat jowls, and a bitter expression. “And where have you been?” she asked Kathleen, harshly cuffing aside the young girl standing at the table peeling potatoes. The girl went on steadily peeling the potatoes, but tears of pain rolled down her cheeks. She could not have been more than thirteen years old and Lily thought she seemed too frightened even to glance up from her task.

“And who might you be?” Cook asked. And, like Mrs. Janssen, she rolled her eyes exasperatedly to heaven when Lily said she was the new “general.” “My Lord, what will they send us next? An old woman fit for the junkyard maybe. Well, get an apron on, girl, there’s a sinkful of dirty pots and pans. And Kathleen, you can butter the souffle dishes and be quick about it.”

The afternoon flew into evening as Cook piled task after task on Lily and Kathleen and the little girl, whose name was Teresa. The parlor maid and the upstairs maid, grand in their black “afternoon” dresses and frilled organza aprons and caps, flitted in and out for cups of tea and a gossip, and later Lily was sent running upstairs with a tea tray for the children’s nanny.

Back in the kitchen Lily was set to work again scrubbing vegetables. She went from one chore to the next in a daze of exhaustion and when the dinner was finally served Cook said with a sigh, “Thank the Lord, that’s another one over.” And then she headed for her own room, leaving them to clean up.

They sat at the kitchen table and devoured cold meat pie
and slabs of bread and butter and mugs of hot cocoa like ravenous little animals. They washed the dishes and scrubbed the table and swept the floor, and then, at one-thirty when everything was clean and tidy again and with Cook asleep and snoring long ago in her room, they climbed wearily up the gloomy back stairs to their hot little attic.

Lily slept the knocked-out sleep of total exhaustion, blissfully unaware of the heat and her aching back and her problems. But the next morning she was wakened with the birds and told to hurry. She was given a blue print frock and a vast wraparound apron, and after a hasty breakfast of bread and tea, she was sent outside to scrub the front steps. As she carried her heavy tin bucket of water and big scrubbing brushes up the basement steps and along the street to the front, she hid her face in shame. Her tears fell into the soapy water as she sank to her knees and began to scrub. Hatred and resentment clawed at her heart. She was learning that there were more subtle ways for the Almighty to exact his punishment for wickedness than an easy death.

Despite Kathleen’s cheerful friendliness Lily was lonely. She was different and the other girls knew it: her voice was low and cultured and she did not speak with their own heavy brogue; her undergarments were of fine linen—they knew because they saw them hanging on the washline next to their own; and she was not used to hard work—anyone with half an eye could see that. Still, Lily tried hard; she remembered to keep her eyes lowered at all times and to keep “her place.” When the others went off to Mass on Sundays she walked by herself on the Common, feeling lonelier than ever. And at night she lay in her lumpy iron bed unable to sleep for the heat, thinking longingly about home. But she tried never to think about her baby and Dermot Hathaway. She wanted so desperately to be free of them, because of what they had done to her.

The days dragged by in a haze of scrubbing and sweeping and polishing and peeling. Her hands were as red and
chapped as Kathleen’s and Teresa’s and her life seemed settled in a routine of endless dreary tasks.

One Sunday morning, a few weeks later, Mrs. Janssen summoned Lily to her study. The rich smells of roast beef wafted up from the kitchen as Lily tidied her hair and made her way nervously to the housekeeper’s sitting room, wondering what she wanted. She stood with her hands behind her back and she kept her eyes down, waiting.

Mrs. Janssen stared severely at her. “It has been pointed out to me that you do not attend Mass on Sundays with the other maidservants,” she said coldly.

“No, ma’am, I do not,” Lily replied.

Mrs. Janssen’s eyes flashed with anger. “You know that the girls are only granted time off to attend their church. And since you do not choose to attend, then you are not entitled to the same privilege. From now on you will be on duty all day Sunday.”

Lily’s eyes opened wide at the injustice. “Oh, but—” she began.

“But what?” Mrs. Janssen’s eyes blazed at her. “Are you daring to contradict me, girl?”

Lily’s chin shot up and she looked her angrily in the eye. “Jayzus, ma’am, yes I am!” she shouted, stamping her foot. “That’s my time off and you know it, and little enough it is too.”

The housekeeper’s red face turned purple with rage and astonishment that anyone would presume to answer her back. “Why, you little Irish slut,” she shouted, banging her fist on her desk. “I’ve never in all my life heard such language. You will pack your bags and get out of here immediately.
And
you’ll forfeit your wages. Don’t ever let me see you in this neighborhood again or else I’ll have the police onto you.”

It was an empty threat but Lily did not know it, and she scurried terrified from the room. Her old impetuousness had cost her her job and now she also had the threat of police trouble hanging over her.

She fled up the back stairs to the attic and began flinging
her things into her straw bag, afraid that if she were not gone quickly Mrs. Janssen would have sent for the police. Kathleen hurried after her. “The old woman’s crazy,” she said sympathetically. “But listen, Lily, I met Mr. Adams’s parlormaid at Mass the other week and she told me they needed a girl. It’s a lovely house on Mount Vernon. Why don’t you try there. Maybe you’ll be lucky.”

Lily thanked her gratefully. She took the steep winding stairs two at a time and ran as fast as she could down Chestnut Street. The agency had taken her first month’s wages and Mrs. Janssen had kept the second. She had scrubbed and cleaned for two months, seven days a week, eighteen hours a day for nothing.

The Adams house was one of the biggest and oldest houses on Mount Vernon. Still panting from her mad escape, this time Lily knew to go down the basement steps to the servants’ entry. Another little Irish maid let her in and conducted her to the housekeeper, Mrs. Hoolihan. She looked her briefly up and down and said disinterestedly, “You’ll do. You can start right away.”

Lily hurried thankfully off, relieved that she bad not asked about her previous employment. She would have had to lie again and her life had become a bewildering tissue of untruths. Sometimes now it seemed to her that the lies were taking over and becoming the truth.

The little maid, Emer, was subdued as she showed Lily her room. “There’s six of us altogether,” Emer said. “I’m the general and you’ll be kitchen. Mrs. Hoolihan and Mrs. Bennett, the cook, are queens of this household,” she added bitterly. “They have their own sitting rooms and they do hardly any work. Mr. Adams is a bachelor. He’s an older gentleman and he travels abroad a lot. He’s away in France until October, so there’s no entertaining to be done and they have it easy. It’s the likes of me and you who get to do all the work around here. Still, we’ve enough to eat and there’s a bit of money and I’m hoping to become a cook meself one day, or maybe a children’s nurse.” She sighed again. “It’s a quiet household all right.”

Lily remembered to keep her eyes lowered and to act respectful. She had learned her lesson and she was determined to keep this job because she had to repay Mrs. Sheridan the five dollars she had taken, and she had to send money to pay for the baby. But fortunately the housekeeper seemed disinterested and the cook was the housekeeper’s friend and they spent all their time closeted together in Mrs. Hoolihan’s sitting room. The parlormaid and upstairs maid put on airs and kept to themselves, and young Emer’s garrulous gossiping tongue grated on Lily’s nerves.

She lay in bed one sleepless night, feeling hopeless, as she always did, about the past and the shame she had brought to her family. A sense of her own wickedness overwhelmed her. She wished for the thousandth time she had never met Dermot, and she cursed her own confident, reckless stupidity. Desolately, she wondered if Ciel ever thought of her. She decided to write to her. She didn’t know if she would ever get the letter, but Ciel loved to collect the mail and there was just a chance.

She sat up half the night writing her letter and the next morning she asked Mrs. Hoolihan for ten minutes off. As she handed over her letter in the post office, she thought it was like the Manila hemp line sent out to rescue the sailors from the sinking ship. Only her sister could save her from drowning in loneliness.

T
ELLING
L
ILY’S STORY
brings back my own memories of what it was like to be a child at the Big House. Remember, I lived there until I was twelve years old and a gloomy place it was, too, with just the three of us rattling around in it like peas in a drum. But as you know in Lily’s day it was a palace, perpetually filled with visitors and guests, relatives and friends and shooting and fishing parties, Christmas dances and hunt balls.

By the time it got to my turn many of the Molyneuxes’ friends and contemporaries had lost their sons in the wars. And by then most had lost their money, and a great many of them had also lost their big houses. Those that hadn’t still lived in crumbling old mansions that half froze them in the winter, with the damp creeping up the elegant Georgian wallpaper and jam jars scattered around the rooms to catch the rain dripping through the holes in the roof.