Never Look Back (6 page)

‘I understand, missis,’ Matilda said awkwardly. ‘You was just worried about yer little ‘un. I ‘ope she weren’t ‘urt with me grabbing ‘er like that?’

The woman looked across at her daughter wriggling in her husband’s arms and smiled with affection. ‘Not a mark on her, and completely unaware what trouble she caused. But let me see to you, my dear. We must get you some tea, and look at your injuries.’

In the next five or ten minutes Matilda felt as if she had woken to find herself in a different world. A cup of very sweet tea was put in her hands, the women from the shop were casting almost envious glances at her, and the parson was introducing himself and his wife to her as if she was someone of quality.

He was the Reverend Giles Milson, his wife Lily, and she was informed that Tabitha, their only child, had just turned two. Their church was St Mark’s in Primrose Hill and they lived in the parsonage. Lily Milson, as she tried to examine Matilda’s back through the torn dress, said she must come home with them in a cab so the wound could be properly examined and bathed.

Matilda was perturbed by this offer. It was common knowledge that Church people only offered charity as a ruse to give the recipient a lecture on the Scriptures. Rosemary Lane was a favourite haunt of missionaries and Bible thumpers, who stood on corners ranting about hell-fire and damnation. She’d heard, too, that girls who turned to them for help were often ravished. What she wanted was to be given a couple of shillings and sent on her way.

Yet a small voice inside her whispered that she might be better off for going along with these people. If nothing else she might
get a decent dinner out of them. Perhaps even a few old clothes.

Matilda’s customary self-restraint failed her in the cab. Whether it was because it was her first ride in a cab, little Tabitha smiling beguilingly and reaching out for her, or the Milsons’ solicitous questions about how she felt, she didn’t know. But suddenly she was crying.

‘I’m sorry,’ she kept repeating, covering her face with her hands. ‘I don’t know what’s up wif me.’

Lily Milson was still feeling tearful herself, and indebted to this girl for saving her child, so her heart welled up with compassion for her. As the tears streamed down the girl’s cheeks, so the dirt was washed away, and it seemed to Lily this was God’s way of showing her that but for the lottery of birth, she too could have been one of life’s unfortunates, instead of sitting here in a carriage, in clean and decent clothes, with a loving husband and beloved daughter beside her.

Lily hadn’t always thought herself fortunate. Back in Bristol, as a middle child among eight, no one had ever taken much interest in her. She was timid and plain, with no real talents. Her father, Elias Woodberry, was a prosperous wool merchant and although he made much of his five sons, the daughters were largely ignored and left in the hands of the servants. Although her mother was distant with all her children, male or female, she seemed actively to dislike Lily, constantly complaining that she had no spirit or even looks to commend her.

At twenty-five, still unmarried and in her parents’ eyes set on spinsterhood, Lily had become an embarrassment, so she was often sent off to various relatives as an unpaid governess to their children for long periods. One of these relatives was her father’s younger brother, an impoverished parson in nearby Bath. Yet far from being a punishment to be sent there, it was a pleasure – her Uncle Thomas was a kindly man, his wife Martha affectionate and grateful for any help with her five lively children. It was while there that she met Giles, a new curate at Uncle Thomas’s church. He was three years older than her, also with no fortune as he was the youngest of six, but the moment she looked into his dark, soulful eyes, she fell for him. He was a true humanitarian, who had chosen the Church rather than the military
as a career, because he fervently believed his mission in life should be to help the poor and needy.

If Lily had met Giles at her parents’ home she doubted he would have found anything to like about her, much less love. There she was a scorned mouse with no conversation or opinion. But no one belittled her at Uncle Thomas’s, they praised her gentle nature, applauded her knowledge of books and loved her for her happy delight in their children. After several months of visits, when Giles sheepishly told her he was falling in love with her, she told him he had only seen the best of her there and perhaps he ought to see her in her own home before making such statements. He laughed and said he was seeing her as she really was, and he didn’t think he would like her parents very much anyway.

It was the happiest day of her life when Giles asked her to marry him. He pointed out that he had little to offer her, that even when he was given his own church they would never have the luxury she’d been brought up with, all he could give her was his love. That was all Lily wanted.

Shortly after their wedding, which her father arranged with almost indecent haste, Giles was sent to London, to St Mark’s in Primrose Hill, to be curate to the frail Reverend Hooper, a widower of seventy. On the Reverend Hooper’s death a year later, Giles took over as parson and they had the small parsonage to themselves.

Lily found being a parson’s wife empowered her. Visiting the sick in the parish, organizing Sunday school for children, and persuading the more wealthy parishioners to donate money for charitable causes, weren’t tasks to her, but a fulfilling joy. To be her own mistress at last, admired for the very qualities her family had scorned, and to have a passionate and adoring husband was like being reborn. She loved Primrose Hill – in many ways it was like Bristol and Bath with its fine Regency houses – yet here she had position and even some authority. Walking up on to the hill and seeing the panoramic views of London across Regent’s Park was an unfailing delight. Giles often reminded her sharply that just outside their parish there were terrible areas where two and even three families lived in one room, where life expectancy was seldom beyond thirty-five, and over half the babies died in infancy, but
because Lily hadn’t seen it with her own eyes, it didn’t trouble her.

Tabitha’s birth was Lily’s moment of triumph. At thirty-one, after four years of waiting and hoping, she had resigned herself to never becoming a mother. But fear was her joy’s uninvited companion. Suddenly Giles’s tales of infant deaths, of cholera, smallpox and all those other monstrous diseases took on terrifying proportions. Although she needed help, she refused to have any other servant than Aggie, the housekeeper they had inherited from the Reverend Hooper, for fear they might bring pestilence into her home.

But now, as Lily looked across the cab at Matilda struggling to compose herself, all at once she realized that today’s near tragedy was a warning to her. There had been many times in the past year when she’d become fraught with trying to cope with a lively toddler alone. Today she’d only been distracted for a moment, yet that was all it took for Tabitha to get out of the shop and into danger. How ironic it was too that although Oxford Street was full of women much like herself, her child should be rescued by one of the class she feared.

Deeply ashamed of herself, Lily reached across the cab and patted Matilda’s arm. ‘Shock makes us all cry,’ she said gently. ‘But you’ll feel better when you’ve had some food and I’ve got that wound cleaned up for you.’

Matilda had been to Primrose Hill selling her flowers many times in the past, but it looked and felt quite different alighting from a cab. The big houses with their marble steps and gleaming brass on their front doors had always seemed threatening before, now they looked welcoming.

Sometimes in her braver moments she had slunk down basement steps to try to sell her wares to the cook or housekeeper, and most times she was shouted at and told never to come back again. But now she was actually being asked in, not through a servants’ entrance either, but through the front door.

It didn’t matter that it was the smallest house in the square, just a plain two-storey one tacked on to the churchyard. It was a real house, the first she’d ever been in.

The front door was opened by an elderly, fat woman with bristles on her chin, wearing a snowy-white apron and ruffled
cap, but her bright smile faded as she saw Matilda with her employers.

‘This is Matilda Jennings, Aggie,’ Giles said, ushering her in before him. ‘She saved Tabitha’s life this morning and got hurt, so we’ve brought her home. I know what a good nurse you can be, so perhaps you’ll take a look at her injuries and give her a meal.’

‘Yes sir,’ the woman replied, although her stiff expression remained. ‘But the dinner’s been waiting this last half-hour, it’s ready to serve.’

Lily brushed past the older woman with Tabitha in her arms. ‘I can serve the dinner,’ she said in an impervious tone. ‘You see to the girl.’

Perhaps it was as well Matilda was struck dumb by the kitchen she was led into, for Aggie’s disapproving scowl might well have made her utter some cheek.

It was large and bright, full of sunshine, the cleanest room she’d ever seen. A large scrubbed table stood in the centre, and instead of just an open fire to cook on, it was inside a contraption fitted with doors. Matilda had seen advertisements for such things and knew it was called a ‘stove’ but she’d never seen one before. A dresser was full of dainty china, shelves trimmed with red and white checked scallops, even the cooking pots looked nice hanging from hooks.

‘So what happened to Miss Tabitha?’ Aggie almost spat at her, the minute she’d closed the door behind them. ‘And I don’t want no lies either. The Reverend might be easy to fool. But I’m not.’

Matilda wasn’t surprised by this response, cooks and housekeepers were notorious for shielding their employers. In as few words as possible she explained what had occurred.

Aggie slumped down on to a chair and looked astonished. ‘You jumped in front of a galloping horse?’

It wasn’t so much a gallop as a canter, but there were four of them, so Matilda nodded.

Aggie’s face softened and she touched her eyes with the bottom of her apron, all hostility gone. ‘Well I never,’ she exclaimed. ‘You were a brave girl. No wonder Madam brought you home. I’d better look at your wounds.’

The smell of meat and gravy wafting around the kitchen was so tantalizing Matilda was tempted to ask for food first, but she
wasn’t brave enough. She turned round so the older woman could view her back.

Aggie tutted but touched the wound gently. ‘Your dress is all stuck to it, and it’s none too clean either. I think you could be doin’ with a bath, miss.’

Some time later when Matilda was at last allowed to sit at the table with a plate of stewed lamb and vegetables in front of her, she wondered for a moment if she was dreaming all this. Was she really eating this huge dinner? Had she really had a real bath? Was the clean grey dress she was now wearing really for her?

It was a house of miracles, that much she was sure of. Aggie had taken a fruit pie out of the stove, all perfect and golden just like the ones in the bakeries. Out in the scullery next to a sink there was a big tub thing with a fire beneath it which Aggie called the boiler, she’d turned a tap and drawn out hot water into a pail to fill a tin bath. Matilda was shocked to find she was expected to take off all her clothes and climb into it. A bath to her was just a wash-down all over, when her brothers and father were out, and she washed her hair under the pump outside.

Aggie had overseen the whole thing, including washing her hair for her. She’d tutted over the wound on her shoulder and said she hoped it wouldn’t leave a scar. Matilda wondered why anyone would worry about a scar on her back, it wasn’t as if she’d ever go around in a low-cut dress like ladies did.

But as if washing with proper soap wasn’t enough, after she’d dried herself, and had ointment put on her back, Aggie came back into the scullery bringing a whole armful of Lily’s old clothes for her, not just a dress but a cotton shift, two flannel petticoats, a pair of stockings and boots. There was even a pair of drawers, something Matilda hadn’t ever worn before. The boots were just a bit big, but that didn’t matter, they were comfortable, with no holes in them.

She felt like a lady. Clean, sweet-smelling and lovely.

Aggie glanced over her shoulder at the young girl eating her dinner and winced as she saw the way she used only the knife and pushed the food on to it with her fingers. But she had cleaned up well, her hair was as shiny as buttercups now it was washed, hanging loose over her shoulders. A pretty little thing with her sweet smile and her lack of cheek. Aggie hadn’t even seen any lice on her, and she’d looked hard enough.

Aggie had been housekeeper at the parsonage for eighteen years. The Reverend Hooper had taken her on when she was widowed and left with four small children. In those days the children came with her to work, sitting out here in the kitchen or playing in the garden while she cleaned, washed and cooked for the old man. When the Milsons arrived nearly seven years ago, she had resented them bitterly. She had been used to doing everything her own way, in fact she’d come to treat the parsonage as if it were her own home. But Lily Milson changed all that. Suddenly it was ‘Spring-clean that room,’ ‘This needs a good polish,’ And ‘That isn’t the way I like this or that cooked.’ She was forever in the kitchen, poking her nose into every last thing. Yet Aggie came round to her when she saw the tender way the woman cared for old Reverend Hooper when he became sick.

Aggie admitted now that Lily had turned out to be an almost perfect parson’s wife. She fully supported her husband’s work in the parish, showing kindness and understanding to those in need. No one was better at smoothing ruffled feathers than she was. She had endless patience with the difficult wealthy parishioners who believed the parson was their sole property, and worked tirelessly at making the parsonage more comfortable and inviting. Since she’d arrived she’d made new curtains, covers for old chairs, and introduced Aggie to new dishes to cook. Her only real fault was that she was so pernickety about trifles. Nothing must be wasted, not a crust of bread or left-over vegetables. If there was one small mark on her husband’s surplice it had to be boiled, starched and ironed again. Everything had to gleam, be it floors, furniture, glass or silver. To her dirt was the Devil.