The Wet Nurse's Tale (7 page)

Pray forgive me . . . I have launched into our own news without wishing you the very best of our prayers and thoughts. I miss you every day and wish that we lived but closer, so that our children, cousins after all, might grow to the same closeness we enjoyed as girls. Ah well, with husbands as busy as your Charles and my James, it seems that we shall have to do with summer parties and weddings. It is the way of progress, I daresay, but it does seem cruel, does it not.

If we were together, I would whisper all the latest gossip into your ear, for life in London does afford some of the most delicious tidbits. Imagine, if you can, what we all thought when Lady Brad shaw attended a ball in a gown that did nothing to hide her delicate condition. But be satisfied, dearest Sophie—the bump on her belly, though evident enough, did nothing whatever to detract from that famous bump on her nose about which we have tittered so often. Oh, I do long to laugh with you as we did when we were young!

The children are very well. Colin is quite the little man now that he is out of his skirts and I do truly think that Netta believes that she is his mother. It is vastly amusing to watch them as they play. I can only hope, dear Sophie, that your sweet Anna and Margaret are as pleased to play with each other as Netta and Colin seem to be.

As for the baby, well, he will have to go out to nurse. I had a nurse in the house for the older two, but the other servants were quite jealous and there was a deal of strife. Twas almost a full-time occupation to keep them in line. It seems that they felt that she ate better than did they, which is of course ridiculous, but you know how servants will take a thing and worry it to death. This time, as James will have me travel with him, I must leave the house alone at times, and thus will not be able to control the servants as much. The nurse I have found lives in Leighton and the baby will go there presently.

I must close and post this letter. I expect Lady Lily Bateson and Mrs. Albert Graves for tea. All my love, darling.

Your Cousin,

Elizabeth Pruthy

Three

T
hese Chandler twins had a trying night, bless their heads. I blame it on the cabbage soup I ate, but perhaps it’s the colic. One twin awakens the other, over and over, til you’d think they’d be too exhausted to even squall but squall they ever do. Only the breast will help, and so I’ve learned to suckle both at once. It made me giggle to think that I could, but that’s what comes from having tits as big as I have. I sit on the bed, with my back against the wall, and put each baby on a pillow beside me to raise it up enough so that its mouth will reach me. Even with the pillows I have to lean forward, which burns my back, but they’ll sleep sooner if they suckle than if they don’t, so I suppose it’s worth the ache.

I must hope the soup passes soon, or else they’ll be up all of today as well, and none of the three of us will sleep at all. I’ll tell Cook that it’s just bread and cheese and tea for me today and I’ll pour the milk out of the window. I’m given plenty of fresh milk, which even my mother would tell me to drink to help my own, but it makes my stomach roil and my farts stink, and I’ve never learned to like it. I pour it out the window when I can, or invite the cat upstairs to drink it from a dish I took from the kitchen. I take care to shoo the cat out as soon as he licks the plate clean lest he sneak into the cradle and steal the babies’ breath.

I’ll tell you how I got here, Reader, though it’s a long story. A long story is a good story though, for a one such as I who must sit and be patient through the days and nights, watching and caring for those who can’t keep themselves.

The Bonney family left for their London season in October. It had rained all the week and the wind whipped the Great House as if sorry to see them go, though Lord knows, the rest of us were not. We lined up to see them off which wasn’t much done, according to Letty, who’d had it from a cousin of hers in another house, but the master demanded it. We waited in the rain while the family picked their ways to the carriages. The young master, who was to ride with his mother, gave me a nod which his mother, who had his arm, marked, I was quite sure. It gave me a start though in truth, I told myself later, what does it matter now? I thought I must quit or be sacked soon enough, after all.

Though I was well on, no one knew. I am that large anyhow, you see. By my luck, I wasn’t bothered much by sickness in the morning which always troubled my mother so. My apron and my bulk hid what needed to be hid. I still did my work well and had Mrs. Hart’s approval, and to be truthful about it all, I hated to disappoint her as much as I feared my father’s wrath. It was right amazing to me that she’d never caught on to my condition, seeing as she’d see a pin out of place in a curtain, but I suppose she never thought of me as that sort of girl. Letty was that sort, and I know that Mrs. Hart often scolded her to be careful of herself. I, on the other hand, didn’t seem to need the same advice. First, I kept myself to myself as far as boys went. Second, they didn’t cast me a glance, anyhow. I knew how she’d feel when she found out: as if I’d cheated her because she hadn’t caught on to me herself. That doesn’t make sense, does it, but Mrs. Hart would hold a grudge against a person for a thing that didn’t.

I hid myself from Mary easily enough. I waited til she changed into her own nightclothes and had her shift over her head and then quick as a blink I’d change mine. I’ve always been quick and anyone’s quicker than she is so it was easy as cake.

Even Master Freddie hadn’t caught on, though our meetings had continued just up til he left for town. It makes me blush to say it, but as my front grew, I just turned so that I wasn’t on my back, you see, and that seemed to both please and distract him. I knew that he’d wonder where I’d learned such a thing, but I didn’t want his weight on me in the front, and that’s what made me remember how animals couple in the fields and wonder if it would work for us too.

Only once did someone cast me a look and that was Mrs. Bonney herself. Just two days before they left for London, I had climbed up on the library ladder to dust a shelf of books when she walked into the room. I curtsied from up there, and she waved me back to my work and walked over to the window to stare out of it for a moment. When I glanced at her again, she was staring hard at my stomach. I realized I had my arms up over my head, one hand steadying myself against a shelf above my shoulder while I dusted the books with a cloth, and that in this posture, I stuck out a great deal. I quickly lowered my arms and turned my face back to my work, but I could feel her eyes on me til she walked out of the room. For a few days after that, every time Mrs. Hart spoke to me, I’d hold my breath, but nothing ever came of it and so I calmed myself.

When I finally resigned my position to Mrs. Hart, it plainly shocked her and made her angry. I wouldn’t tell her my real reason. Instead I told her that it had to do with my mother’s health. It seemed to me that it was all my business and that I was less likely to poison Mrs. Hart against the young ones in our family if she didn’t know the truth. In a village like ours, and unless you have a trade which none of us Roses did but for my brother John, the Great House is the best hope for employment that we have.

I told Mary because, after all, she’s family isn’t she, and then I had to threaten her to keep her peace about it.

“But, Susan,” said Mary, “who can have done it to you? I never saw you with a man, not once.”

“Aye, well, that’s my secret and I’ll keep it, if you please. Only don’t tell anyone here about why I’ve gone and if they think they’ve guessed, you deny it for me, Mary.”

“Susan,” she said, suddenly all over horrified, “it cannot be that it was the master, can it? Not like Ellen?”

“As if I would have let that bastard near enough me to . . .” said I. “No, twas someone else, someone you do not know of.”

“Oh,” said she, sobbing, like she always does at the slightest little grief, “they’ll all find out anyhow and we’ll be disgraced. You know it’s true.”

“Mary,” said I, “just you make sure it’s not you who’s told them. For if you do,” I said and clenched my teeth so she’d know I meant it, “I’ll tell Father about what you do with Timothy out behind the kitchen garden, and then he’ll flay you for sure.”

Well, Mary’s afraid of me and so I knew she wouldn’t tell. But I spent yet another sleepless night thinking about my father and what he would do to me when he saw the truth.

I let my mother and father wonder why I’d come home for a day before I told them. But then I had to do it. My father called me a slut, a slattern, a whore, and all that. He slapped me so hard I had the handprint a hour later and then he went to find as much ale as he could swallow.

“It’s simply another excuse for him,” I said to my mother as she bathed my cheek where he’d smacked it. “He’ll blame me for his headache tomorrow but he’d have had it anyhow and you know it.”

“Yes, I know it,” my mother said. Then a doubt crossed her face. “Susan, the same as happened to Ellen didn’t happen to you, did it? Surely not?”

“No,” I told her as I’d told Mary, but gentler, for she was my mother and still grieving from poor Ellen’s fate. “No, Mother, it came about in the regular way.” I tried to speak nicely, for to be sure, I felt the shame of it, though the shame was mostly for getting myself in trouble than for the deed itself.

“But who was it, Susan? Your father’ll smack you til you tell him and I want to know too.”

“Mother, listen,” said I. “Father’ll never get anything out of the man who did this, believe you me. It’s impossible. We might as well pretend it’s a virgin birth for all the good it’ll do him to try.”

It upset my mother and my father too that I acted so calm about it all. But I did not know how else to be. It might have made my father soften if I’d cried more but I didn’t so he didn’t. In truth, I had drawn so much from my pot of tears for Ellen that I could hardly pull up more for this. It caused me a great, hard pang to think that I had ruined myself to be married, that’s true. But my mind excused it thus: no man whom I’d accept had ever looked at me twice and it might never have happened even if I’d kept my virtue. And if it came to pass that I wanted to marry, say, if my father continued to abuse me forever and I had to leave his house, there’d be some ugly widower in need of a mother to his brats who’d take me. There was always such a one.

The fact is that I did not hate the creature inside me; not at all. I recall one day, as I walked through the snow to milk our cow, I felt a kick so hard it took my breath away. I found a stump to sit on and watched my stomach, even through my heavy skirt and apron, as it moved like a basin of water carried too fast. It was astounding, it was.

I remembered watching my mother, time after time, as she stood in the garden or at the table, with her stomach jutting so that she could hardly do her work. She was a woman who looked rosy when she was with child and prettier then, than when she wasn’t. Carrying a babe would put some flesh on her and she wouldn’t look as gaunt as she often did between times. My father seemed to see it too; he’d sometimes give her a kiss or a squeeze in front of all of us, just to see her blush and smile.

My brothers and sisters, the older ones still in the house, seemed ashamed at first of my condition, but as time waned it became a matter of course, the way things do when you’re living with them day to day. Indeed, round as I became, I was still stronger than most of them and worked harder than any of them. In my time away in service, they’d forgotten that I could hold my own quite well, but they learned it again soon enough.

When Bill, who was seventeen and between Alice and me, called me “saucebox” under his breath when I wouldn’t fetch something for him that he wanted, I caught his hair in my hand and pulled it so hard he cried like a baby. “If ever you say such again,” I said to him, in a calm, scary way I have made my own, “I will crush your parts with a brick while you sleep. Do you understand that I mean what I say?” He whimpered and refused to answer so I twisted tighter. “Say, ‘Yes, sister, ’ ” said I, til he did. He walked away glowering, but I could see him recall to himself the way I had been and realize that I had not changed, babe or no babe. Later, I made him a special tart from cherries my mother had dried from the springtime and smiled when I handed it to him. I was pleased to see that respect for me had crept back into his gaze as well it should for I am his older sister. Anyhow, I see no call to shrink and mewl when I’m as big as any boy and fiercer than most.