The Wet Nurse's Tale (31 page)

Thirteen

I
could not have loved my Davey more. Indeed, I was amazed at how my heart would beat to see him again, even if all I had done was to run to the kitchen for new nappies. I thought of all the babies I had nursed and how dear they was to me, every one, but, Reader, the difference between how I felt for them and how I felt for my own child was the difference between milk and cream. Twas all I could do to hide it, for I must hide it, from the other servants and Mrs. Norval both. There is a look as mothers have for their own children that they do not have for those they look after and that is what I could not show to any but Davey himself.

He was getting fat on mother’s milk and his bit of gruel. His belly was as round as a plum and his eyes were like gray stars with lashes just as long as ever you could please. It seemed to me that his eyes would turn brown, like his father’s, and I wondered if his hair would curl. Ofttimes now I would think on Harry Abrams and try to picture his face in my head. I would not allow myself to go too far, for I did not want melancholy, but I was pleased to think my dear baby was that man’s son for I thought him a fine man.

When Mrs. Norval did not require me, I would spend all my time with my little son and gaze at him as much as I liked. I could not forget the horror I had felt when I had first understood that he had been taken from me. Losing my Joey had been a sadness I almost could not bear, but the hell of knowing that Davey was in the world but not with me had been worse.

For a few weeks after Mr. Brooks had talked to me about his sister, all was well. Christmas Day came and Boxing Day, and we servants had a goose to eat, as a treat from Mr. Brooks, and also some extra shillings in our pocketbooks, from him as well.

“He is a lovely man, ain’t he?” sighed Carrie when he had wished us all a happy Christmas. Mrs. McCullough looked at her very severe which made us all laugh loud.

“Mrs. McCullough!” said Carrie. “I mean nothing of the naughty sort and you know it well! The idea!”

Mrs. Norval seemed to enjoy Christmas. She felt well enough to attend church with her brother and his wife and to take supper with them. Not a day went by that she did not ask to see Davey and one day she told me that she would like to give him a present. I suggested that he have a horsehair brush for his hair, which was not much on his head but which one day would be. I had always liked a horsehair brush, those that I had seen on ladies’ tables, and thought that since he was but a baby and would not need it for a while, that I could use it myself and it would be no worse for the wear. Mrs. Norval was surprised that a baby might want such a thing, but I explained that while babies want nothing but their milk and a dry nappy, that Mrs. Stone, the lady who lived up the way, had a hairbrush for each of her children as a present as that was the way a good mother did it. I chuckled to myself later: I had used Mrs. Stone so often that she seemed real to me, and I had to recall myself to myself to remember that I had quite invented her.

On Christmas Eve, Mrs. Norval asked to hold Davey on her lap which she did do though only for a moment. I had to show her how to hold him around his little waist so that he did not topple over, and I begged for her to smell his head which carried the lovely yeasty scent that a baby has. She looked up at me, where I was standing over her as she held him, and she said, “Like this?” and I thought to myself, Dear Lord, this lady does not have the sense God gave a cat. She gave him back very soon; neither of them seemed overmuch comfortable with the other one.

At Twelfth Night, something turned in her head. I did not know why; none of us did. All us servants noted it; twas as if she had another letter, though Lydia swore that she had not. Twas all we talked about below-stairs, how strange she had turned, stranger than even Mrs. McCullough, who had been there the longest, had ever seen before.

Overnight, she became quite violent. She scratched Lily so hard on the cheek that the blood ran down her neck, and Lily cried that she’d be scarred for all her life. While Lily was a pudding, I did not like to see Mrs. Norval abuse her so, and so I told the girl to leave the lady entirely to me for the rest of the day. I myself attended to her and saw that her hair was done, as best as I could, and that she ate. She was docile for me, but I could not take her care all on myself what with the baby to look after, so I had to give her back to Lily the next day.

For several days, Mrs. Norval had her tantrums and her fits very often. Once, twas that her soup burned her tongue; at that, she threw the rest of the bowl to the floor and pulled the window curtains in the dining room from their rod. Another time, she screamed at Lydia when there was nothing to her liking in the post. Lydia was calm and smart and also, it seemed to me, she had seen this madness before in another place, for it did not shake her as it did the others when Mrs. Norval shouted and made no sense. It did not shake me either, which I believe is because I kept such careful watch of her. I could not help but fret, though, for what it was she might do when she was not o’erseen.

Twas not only Davey I worried for. I had grown fond of Carrie and Lydia and the others though it is true that I had a secret from them. But who among us does not nurse a secret? And I believe that if ever they had learned that I was Davey’s real mother, they would not have blamed me for my actions. But never mind. It is Carrie who suffered the most perhaps from Mrs. Norval’s strangeness, as we called it to be polite, though madness cannot be hidden by pleasant words.

One morning, as Carrie stood on the front stairs polishing the banister, she came into Mrs. Norval’s view as that lady went down. And without a warning, Mrs. Norval pushed. Twas very terrible, indeed. She pushed Carrie and then stood and laughed while we all came a’running to see what the noise had been. There was Carrie crumpled at the bottom of the staircase with her face very white with pain and red with blood. Her foot was broke, but what’s worse is that she had hit a small table with a blue vase on it, and the vase had shattered and one of the shards had flown into her eye. Mrs. McCullough called for the surgeon very quick and he came and said it was a wonder that she did not lose the eye completely. He bandaged it but it began to seep and to cause her very much pain indeed. For a week after the bandage came off, her eye was blood-red and she could not bear that a speck should fall into it, so that Lydia and I shared her blacking chores between us and were thus very tired by the day’s end. Indeed, her eye still ran with green weeks later and I cannot tell you whether it ever healed completely or not.

When Mrs. Norval pushed Carrie, we all of us turned against her. I was the biggest and she minded me the best and so I was elected to bring her her meals and to help her dress. Lily was afraid of her; Carrie would not go near her; only Lydia and I could together see to her needs and defend ourselves from her violence.

I had begun to fear for Davey very much. What seemed very bad to me is that Mrs. Norval became quite fixed on him. She asked for him every day and no excuse I could make—that he was asleep in his crib or that he was rashy—would suffice but that she should see her little angel as she had begun to call him. Indeed, it did seem that the sight of him would calm her when she was disturbed, but I did not leave her alone with him, not even for an instant, nor did I step away from them when she held him stiffly on her lap the way she would do when I handed him over. He had grown to know her and would smile at her, but she did not smile back nor did she meet his eyes and talk to him. She just held him in front of her with her arms very taut. I thought he was a heavy baby to hold the way she did, but I think now that her madness gave her strength.

When she held him she kept very quiet. At first, I would chuckle and coo and say words such as, “Oh, is he not a little man, miss? Can you see that soon he will be a great brute?” But she did not answer. It made her think of something else or some other time to hold him like she did, and she was as one in another land where she could not hear me speak. It made me glad in a way that she did not like to have a fire in her grate, because I would not have put it past her to chuck him into it like a lump of coal into a stove. She was that strange.

Imagine my surprise, then, to hear what I will tell you next. Twas a freezing afternoon in early January. We had suffered much from her temper that morning, being as how she would have her window open to the weather and she would hang out of it in plain view of the street, with only her shift to clothe her. When I tried to pull her in, she reached around as quick as a spark, to slap my cheek. I was quicker than she and grabbed her arms and held them tight. I could feel the unnatural strength in her, welling up, like there was something underneath urging her. If I was not the Christian that I am, I would think that it were witchcraft at play. Twas the first time she had ever attempted to slap me, and it worried me very much and caused me to wonder whether we ought not to dose her with laudanum to keep her just a little sane. Twas a problem, indeed.

And therefore, that afternoon when she asked for the baby, I was full ready to refuse her. We had discussed it below-stairs earlier that day, and I had given forth that I thought she ought only to be allowed to see the baby when she was good.

“Like a reward?” said Lydia. “Can we, do you think, treat her thus? We must not overstep our bounds.”

“Tis true,” said Mrs. McCullough. “Mr. Brooks, for all that how friendly he is to us, will have an eye out to whether we are cruel or kind, or whether we are taking advantage. She is not so mad that she cannot make him believe her yet when she tells him she wants a thing and we will not give it to her. The trouble is that he does not see that she’s as mad as she is. He cannot see it, for she acts more regular when she is with him. That’s the problem but there’s no ending to it that we can predict.”

“Yes,” I said. “She’s our better, though she’s mad. Tis a strange way to run a household but there you are.”

“Susan,” said Carrie suddenly, “I worry for the baby, you know.”

“Yes,” said I, though twas hard for me to speak, as my words did not want to form. “Yes, I do as well.”

“We must all keep careful watch,” said Mrs. McCullough.

As we nodded together I had but one thought: I must get us out of this place, my Davey and me.

Thus, though I worried I might overstep myself, I had decided that I would not let her see the baby that day. I did not know how I would manage it, but I had decided to do it. I was ready for a fit of tantrum; I was ready for violence; I was ready for anything but that she should hold my son that day. I sat in my room with him on my lap and waited for her call.

It came. I walked down the stairs feeling like an uglier Bathsheba, bent on protecting her Solomon. Mrs. Norval sat in the sitting room, just as usual, in one of her fancy gowns, unlaced at the back. The sweat stood on her forehead.

“Where is the baby?” she asked as I came in. “I called for him.”

I had prepared myself. “Ma’am,” said I very firm, “the baby is asleep. He is a’sleeping in his crib. I am sorry, ma’am, but he is not to be wakened just at the moment.”

I heard her gasp and I held my breath and clenched my fists and looked at the floor. I was ready for what she would have for me. And then I heard her let her breath out and this is what she said to me.

“Yes. Mrs. Stone told me just recently that a sleeping baby must never be waked up. I suppose you must let him sleep and I will see him again later. Thank you, Susan Rose.”

I was so surprised that, Reader, I swear I almost pissed myself. Twas eerie, to be sure. I thought to ask her when she had spake to Mrs. Stone and where and how, seeing as she was not a real person, but then I recalled to myself that I had got what needed to be got and I curtsied and went back upstairs.

In the days to come, she spoke of Mrs. Stone more and more often. Between times, she seemed as confused as ever. She would take up a book and turn the pages but I could see that she was not reading but just turning. Or we would take the baby for a walk if the day were not very cold, but she would not be able to stop walking, and so I would bring the baby back and send Lydia out to fetch Mrs. Norval in. Or else she would sit on her settee and rock, though the settee was firm on the floor, and she would eat up a whole afternoon just rocking and talking to herself.

But when I let her see the baby, she would tell me how Mrs. Stone had told her to hold the baby “like this, that his little head may lean against me” (that was I who had showed her that) or that Mrs. Stone had suggested that the baby might like a game of Pat-a-Cake (which I had showed her how to do). Once she told me a story that Mrs. Stone told her, all about a baby who had very bad colic and had died. “How terrible for his poor mother,” said Mrs. Norval, shaking her head sadly.

At first, I thought it was vastly amusing that Mrs. Norval seemed to speak with Mrs. Stone so very often, because she seemed to think Mrs. Stone a sensible person and it was helpful to us all that my lady would take her good advice. But soon, the advice became strange.

One day Mrs. Norval allowed as how it was Mrs. Stone’s suggestion that the baby have some bites of meat at his next meal. No contradiction was allowed, though I pointed out that the baby’s teeth had not yet come in and that he would certainly choke. Mrs. Norval did not care. And so I took the meat and chewed it to thin strands, as thin and soft as ever I could, and put the tiniest taste in his mouth, for she would watch as he ate his meat. He did not like it at all and it came out in his drool. But that did not matter to her: as long as she had followed Mrs. Stone’s directive, she was very happy. Another day she was quite firm that Mrs. Stone had told her not to take the baby out of doors til full summer. As he loved his outings, this made me very sad. But she did not care. If Mrs. Stone had said it, it was what she would have.

And then one day, I came back into our room from the outhouse and he was gone. My heart banged once, so hard it hurt me. I yelled very loud so that Mrs. McCullough came to the stairs to see what was wrong. She did not know where he was and neither did Lydia nor yet Carrie. My blood rushed behind my eyes with fear. I made for Mrs. Norval’s room as fast as ever I could, but I ran too slow, for as I opened the door of the bedchamber, I glimpsed her face as she closed and, Reader! locked the door of her bathing room. I had seen her eyes and seen the evil there, and it was horrible.