Yes, Mama

‘Aye, he’s a lovely man,’ she said wistfully one day to Fanny, who, quick of eye, had noticed the blush which rose to Polly’s cheeks when Master Edward’s name was mentioned in the kitchen and had later teased her about it.

‘Does ’e coom to your room?’ inquired Fanny with great interest, as she quickly dusted the hallway of the top storey.

Polly was changing into her afternoon uniform, ready to open the front door to Elizabeth’s callers, and she paused in tying her apron.

‘Aye,’ she whispered, ‘but don’t tell no one, Fan. He’s a really good man and I wouldn’t want ’is Mam to find out.’

‘Watch out you don’t get in the family way,’ Fanny warned, as she commenced to dust down the bare wooden stairs that led up to the nurseries. After a moment, she looked up again. ‘Be careful. He could tell someone. Some of ’em is real organ-grinders. When did it start?’

Polly adjusted her frilly cap and prepared to come down the stairs. ‘He’ll never tell nobody,’ she replied firmly. Then, in answer to Fanny’s question, she went on, ‘It all coom about, the year ’e coom down with malaria. Remember, ’e coom home and the mistress and me ’ad to nurse ’im? He were home a long time, till ’e got over it.’ She sighed. ‘It were then when he were better and not yet called back to ’is Regiment.’ As she sidled past Fanny on the stairs, she giggled suddenly. ‘He couldn’t do it, first time – he were too weak!’

‘Do ’e give you anythin’ for it?’

‘No. I don’t want nothin’. I love ’im.’ The dark head with its frilled cap was raised proudly, as she paused, hand on banister, to look back at her fellow servant.

Fanny opened the staircase window and leaned out to shake her duster. She laughed. ‘Aye, you’ve got it bad, you ’ave.’

Polly sighed again. ‘Aye. I wish he didn’t ’ave to go to them furrin parts. The Missis told the Master as he’s goin’ back to India soon – he’s bin in Aldershot so long, I begun to think he’d be there always. It makes me sick to me stomach to think about them blackies in their turbans, with their guns.’

When Edward did return to India, this time to the Punjab, Alicia began to get regular letters from her brother. He would invariably end them by sending his love to her and asking her to remember him kindly to Polly, who, he trusted, was well. In neat script, seven-year-old Alicia would equally invariably reply that Polly was well and sent her best respects.

II

In an effort to re-establish herself, Elizabeth had, about a year after Alicia’s birth, plunged into the fashionable world of charitable undertakings. The ladies of St Margaret’s Church found her so useful, when planning church bazaars, that they began to ignore the occasional innuendo which reached their ears about their fellow parishioner.

With one or two other ladies from the church, she became a fund-raiser for the new Royal Infirmary and for the Sheltering Home for Destitute Children in Myrtle Street. She was occasionally snubbed, but a number of the ladies appreciated her hard work and, with them, she was sometimes asked to receptions given for the many important visitors who passed through Liverpool. Humphrey soon discovered that she was acquainted with the wives of men he would like to know, and he suppressed his smouldering anger with her sufficiently to be able to address her and encourage her to ask these people to dinner.

A handsome, well-dressed woman in her forties, forced to deny her natural sensuality, she became, as the years went on, extremely peevish with those who served her.

‘Forever pickin’ on yez,’ Fanny complained to Polly, while they prepared the dining-room for a formal dinner in September, 1896. She pushed a mahogany chair more exactly in position at the glittering table. Quick and impatient, she could be nearly as irritable as Elizabeth was.

‘Aye,’ agreed Polly, ‘and I’ll get it if I don’t hurry. Got to collect Allie from Miss Schreiber’s.’

‘She’s risin’ eleven now. She’s old enough to take ’erself to school and back.’

‘The ould fella says as she’s to be escorted. I heard ’im. Gettin’ at her, he was, pickin’ on her for nothin’. Tryin’ to make things awkward for her. She said as Allie were old enough.’

‘Don’t want ’er to stray like her Mam,’ opined Fanny, positioning finger bowls round the table with mathematical precision. ‘It’s herself what needs escorting. She’s still fine lookin’.’

‘Fanny!’

‘Well, she’s forever trailin’ her petticoats afore one man or another. You watch her tonight.’

‘Nothin’ comes of it,’ Polly responded forcefully. ‘It’s just her way – and she must be all of fifty by now – an old woman. You shouldn’t say such things – and about a good Mistress an’ all.’

‘Aye, she’s quite good,’ agreed Fanny reluctantly. She turned to poke up the fire. ‘How do we know what comes of it? Anyway, who’s comin’ tonight?’

‘A professor and his missus and two other couples. They’re all at that big meeting in St George’s Hall. A real famous doctor come to talk to ’em. Read it in the paper. Name of Lister.’ Polly surveyed the table, set with Elizabeth’s best china and Bohemian cut glass. ‘Well, that’s done, anyways.’

‘Better snatch a cup o’ tea while we can,’ suggested Fanny, putting down the poker on its rest in the hearth.

‘Not me. I must run to get Allie.’

III

After school, Alicia sat by the kitchen fire, watching a harassed Mrs Tibbs baste a huge joint of beef, while Fanny stirred a cauldron of soup. Polly thrust a glass of milk into the child’s hand and told her that after she had drunk it she should go into the garden and do some skipping in the fresh air.

‘Do I have to?’

‘Aye, coom on, luv. I’ll come with yez and count your peppers for a mo’. Then I got to help Cook.’

She put her arm round Alicia and together they went out of the back door, which led into a brick-lined area, and then up well-washed stone steps to the long, narrow walled garden. A straight, paved path ran from the area to a wooden door in the high, back wall. The wind was whirling the first autumn leaves along the path and over the lawn, and the single aspen tree at the far end shivered, as if it already felt the cold of winter. Opposite the tree, on the other lawn, stood an octagonal summerhouse, where Alicia occasionally played house with a little girl called Ethel, who also attended Miss Schreiber’s school. Nearer the house, an apple tree bore a crop of cooking apples almost ready for picking.

At Polly’s urging, Alicia did a fast pepper, her skipping rope thwacking the path quicker and quicker. Polly counted, and they both laughed when Alicia finally tripped over the rope.

‘Seventy-two,’ shouted Polly.

The latch on the back gate rattled suddenly, as it was lifted. A grubby face, topped by wildly tousled hair, peered cautiously round the door. A very thin boy, about eleven years old, entered like a cat on alien ground. His breeches were in the last stages of disintegration and were topped by a ragged jacket too large for him. He wore a red kerchief round his neck and was bare-legged and barefooted. Alicia smiled at him; he was Polly’s brother who came sometimes, when he was unemployed, to beg a piece of bread from her. Though he smelled like a wet dog, Alicia accepted him as part of her small world, as she did the coalman, the milkman and the postman.

This visit was obviously different. The boy was blubbering like a brook in spate, and when he saw Polly he ran into her arms.

‘Why, Billy! What’s to do?’ She hugged him to her white, starched apron.

‘It’s Mam,’ he told her. ‘She’s took bad – real bad. Mary’s with her and Ma Fox from upstairs. Dad says to come quick.’

Unaware that his sister had suckled both of them and was equally loved by Alicia, he ignored the girl and clutched at Polly.

‘Jaysus! What happened?’

‘She’s bin sick of the fever for nearly a week and she don’t know none of us any more.’

Fever was a scary threat, and Alicia interjected impulsively, ‘Polly, you must go. I’ll do my homework while you’re away.’

‘I’ll have to ask your Mam. We got a dinner party.’ She looked down at the mop of hair on her shoulder and gently pushed the boy away from her. ‘Don’t grieve, luv. I’ll come, somehow.’

Billy stepped back and wiped his eyes with the backs of his hands. This left a dirty smear on either cheek.

For the first time, he seemed to realize that Alicia was there watching him, her skipping rope dangling from one hand. He stared at her for a second and then, obviously trying to re-establish his manliness after such a bout of tears, he carefully winked at her. While she giggled, he turned on his heel and trotted back down the path. The garden door banged behind him, and, as he ran, they could hear his bare feet thudding along the back alley.

With Alicia hurrying behind her, Polly fled back to the kitchen. She was met by an anxious Fanny.

‘The Missus is in, and in a proper temper, askin’ why you wasn’t there to open the door for her. I told her as you was in the garden with Allie, but she’s real put out and sez you’ve not put the claret glasses on the table.’

‘Bugger her.’ Polly stripped off her kitchen apron, snatched up her frilly parlour one and whipped it round herself. The ribbons of her cap streamed behind her, as she shot upstairs, leaving a surprised Fanny facing Alicia and asking, ‘And what’s to do with her?’

IV

The dining-room door was ajar. Elizabeth, still in her osprey-trimmed hat, was standing in the doorway, tapping her foot fretfully.

The moment the green baize door to the back stairs opened to reveal a breathless Polly, Elizabeth turned on her. ‘Polly, claret glasses, girl, claret glasses – and couldn’t you find a more interesting way to fold the table napkins?’

Polly’s panic over her mother immediately gave way to her mistress’s wrath, and she responded humbly, ‘I thought it was your favourite way of havin’ the napkins, Ma’am.’

‘It is not. And the claret glasses?’

Polly bobbed a little curtsey. ‘I’ll get ’em immediately, Ma’am. I wasn’t sure which wine you was having.’

Aware that she was not being quite fair to a woman she respected, Elizabeth tried to control her irritability, and turned to pass through the hall and climb the red-carpeted staircase to her bedroom. Polly followed her anxiously to the foot of the stairs. ‘Ma’am, may I speak to you, Ma’am?’

Her plump white hand on the carved newel post, Elizabeth turned to look down at her. ‘Yes?’

‘Ma’am, I just had word that me Mam is very ill and is callin’ for me. Can I go to her?’

‘Really, Polly!’ Elizabeth burst out. ‘What has come over you? First the dinner table, and then this! How can you go anywhere when Professor Morrison is coming to dinner? Who is going to wait at table?’

‘I thought, perhaps, Fanny could do it, for once. Mam’s real ill – she wouldn’t send otherwise.’

‘Fanny is too clumsy – and I am sure other members of your family can care for your mother for a few hours.’ Elizabeth was shaking with anger. ‘If you must go home, you may go immediately after you have brought in the tea and coffee trays. Fanny can clear up afterwards. But make sure you are back in time to take Miss Alicia to school in the morning.’

Polly kept her eyes down, so that Elizabeth should not see the bitter anger seething in her. I’ll get another job, I will, she raged inwardly. Friend? She’s no friend. Aloud, she said, ‘Yes,’m. Thank you, Ma’am.’

As she got the claret glasses out of the glass cupboard, she cried unrestrainedly for fear of what might have happened to her mother.

When she went down to the basement kitchen, it was in turmoil. Mrs Tibbs missed not having a kitchen-maid and she still tended to lean on Fanny for help. Fanny worked hard. During the day, she still had to carry hods of coal to all the fireplaces in the house, in addition to her cleaning duties as housemaid. Though she resented the totality of her work, she was, like Polly, thankful to be reasonably fed and warm under a mistress who did not usually penetrate to the kitchen. Polly, also, found herself hard-pressed to keep up with the work of parlourmaid and take care of Alicia, as well as do the extensive mending required and the careful pressing of Elizabeth’s elaborate dresses, while Humphrey strove to keep the costs of his household down.

Today, his housekeeper-cook, Mrs Tibbs, usually fairly calm, was in full spate in the steaming kitchen. She shouted to a reluctant Fanny to fill up the hot water tank by the blazing fire and then to peel the potatoes. The light of the fire danced on her sweating face, as she tasted the mock turtle soup and added a quick shake of pepper to it.

Polly was weeping as she came through the door, and Mrs Tibbs, Fanny and Alicia all looked up. They listened in shocked silence as Polly told them what Elizabeth had said about her going to her mother. Polly turned to Fanny. ‘Could you manage the clearing up, Fan?’

‘’Course I can, duck. Mrs Tibbs and me – we’ll manage, won’t we, Mrs Tibbs?’

‘I’m sure I don’t know how – but we will,’ sighed Mrs Tibbs. She picked up a ladle and opened the big, iron oven at the side of the fireplace to baste the joint of beef in it. Then she carefully closed the door on it again. She turned to Polly, who was wiping her eyes with a corner of her apron. ‘Now, Polly, make yourself tidy again, and then you could beat the cream for the trifle – and give Miss Alicia her tea.’

Alicia had come forward to watch Mrs Tibbs deal with the meat. The cook asked her, ‘Would you like a bit of our Shepherd’s Pie, luv?’

‘Yes, please, Mrs Tibbs. Can’t I help you – or do some of the dishes for Fanny?’

Mrs Tibbs smiled at her. ‘No, luv. It wouldn’t be proper. Your Mam wouldn’t like it.’

So Polly carried a tray containing Shepherd’s Pie and trifle up to the nursery – Mrs Tibbs had made the dessert in a little glass dish specially for Alicia.

As Polly put the tray down in front of her, Alicia asked, ‘Why doesn’t Mama let me come down to dinner, now? All the girls at school have dinner with their parents. I’m nearly grown up – and it would save you such a lot of running up and down, Polly.’ She shook out her table napkin and put it on her lap. ‘I could even eat my meals in the kitchen with you and the others. And, you know, I could have helped Mrs Tibbs today, so as to free Fanny to wait at table.’

‘Bless your lovin’ heart.’ Polly bent and gave her a quick kiss on the top of her flaxen head. Then she hastily rewound the plaits of her own hair more tightly and settled a clean cap on top of them, while she considered how to answer the girl.

‘It’s not proper for you to eat with the servants, luv. And your Papa gets cross very quickly, as you well know. So your Mam probably wants him to have his dinner quiet, like.’

‘I don’t think it’s because of that, because I can be as quiet as a mouse. I think they don’t like me, not even Mama. There must be something wrong with me.’

‘Och, no! Parents always like their kids,’ Polly lied.

‘Well, I don’t understand why I can’t be with them.’

No you don’t, thanks be, thought Polly. I’d hate you to find out. She was anxious to get back to her work, but Alicia was following her own line of thought, so she lingered for a moment, as the child asked her, ‘Do you think Mama would be grumpy, if I asked Mrs Tibbs to teach me to cook? Some of the girls at school are learning from their Mamas. You see, I could then help Mrs Tibbs.’ She looked earnestly up from her dinner.

‘Well, you could ask your Mam. But don’t say nothin’ about helpin’ – she might not like that.’

‘Surely I can help a friend?’

Polly did not respond. She merely said she must get back to the kitchen and fled before she had to explain the limit of friends allowed to little girls.

Alicia licked both sides of her trifle spoon and sadly scraped the empty dish. She put the dish back on to the tray. As she slowly folded up her napkin and pushed it into the ivory ring which Edward had sent her from India, she thought there was no explaining the idiosyncrasies of parents. She leaned back in her chair and her lips began to tremble – she wanted to cry. It was so strange that the other girls at school had parties at Christmas and birthdays and went on holidays with their mothers and fathers, and no such things ever happened to her – she was not even taken shopping by her mother – Polly took her to Miss Bloom, the dressmaker, to have her dresses and coats fitted, or to Granby Street to buy the few Christmas gifts she did not make herself. Polly even took her to All Saints Church most Sunday mornings.

She got out her spelling book to do her homework for the following day. But the letters seemed to jump erratically, as she realized suddenly that not only had she never given a party; she had never been invited to any other girls’ parties, either.

Chapter Eight

I

James Tyson did not take much notice of his wife, Bridie’s, complaints of fatigue and of pain in her legs; women always complained of their feet and that they were tired. He himself suffered chronic pain in his back, a relic of his work as a docker; it made it impossible, now, for him to find work, except occasionally as a nightwatchman. It was Bridie selling her rags and old buttons in the market who kept them from starvation. When one morning she failed to get up in time for the opening of the market, it was suddenly brought home to him that her complaints were not the usual ones.

‘Me head,’ she nearly screamed to him. ‘It’s me head!’

She was hot with fever, so a worried James suggested that she should go to the public Dispensary to ask for medicine.

‘I couldn’t walk it,’ she gasped. ‘I’ll be better later on.’

James woke Billy and sent him off to work; he had a job cleaning up after the horses in a stable belonging to a warehouse. On the way, James said, he was to call in on his sister, Mary, and ask her to come to her mother. Mary arrived at Bridie’s bedside half an hour later, her newest baby tucked inside her shawl. She was followed by her daughter, Theresa, a fourteen-year-old who plied the streets at night. They both stared down at Bridie tossing on her truckle bed; neither knew what to do.

Finally, Mary sent James upstairs to the tap in the court, to get some water to bathe Bridie’s face with. ‘Looks as if she’s got the flu,’ she suggested, as she handed her baby to Theresa to hold.

Nobody else attempted to put a name to the fever; there were all kinds of fevers, and people either got better from them or they died. And pain such as Bridie’s was something you put up with.

The news went round the court that Billy Tyson’s Mam had the flu. Nobody wanted to catch it, so they stayed away. James went to peddle Bridie’s fents in the market.

Word that Bridie had the flu very badly reached her Great-aunt Kitty, who lived in the next court. She hobbled down the stairs from the attic in which she lived and, slowly and painfully, dragged her arthritic limbs into the Tysons’ cellar room. She was panting with the effort as James, returned from the market, made her welcome; few people knew as much about sickness as Great-aunt Kitty did. She pushed her black shawl back from her bald head and bent over to talk to the patient.

‘’Ow you feelin’, Bridie?’ she croaked.

Her eyes wide and unblinking, Bridie tossed and muttered unceasingly.

‘Lemme closer,’ the old lady commanded Mary. ‘And give me the candle so I can see proper.’

As was the custom, Bridie still had her clothes on; clothes kept you warm at night as well as in the daytime. Only her boots had been removed, to show black woollen stockings with holes in the heels and toes.

As she shuffled closer to the bed, the old lady muttered, ‘Well, it int cholera, praise be, or she’d be dead by now. Is ’er stummick running?’

‘No. She ain’t even pissed.’

Aunt Kitty paused and looked up at Mary. ‘She truly ’asn’t?’

‘No. Not a drop. I bin ’ere all day.’

‘That’s bad.’ Aunt Kitty bent still lower, the candle dripping wax on Bridie’s blouse, while she lifted the sufferer’s chin and held it firmly in order to take a good look at her face. ‘Lord presairve us!’ she exclaimed. She touched a dark encrustation at the corners of Bridie’s mouth, and then drew back thoughtfully.

She turned to Billy and James and ordered, ‘You turn your backs. I’m goin’ to take a real look at ’er all over.’

Filled with apprehension, Billy followed his father’s example.

Great-aunt Kitty gestured towards Mary with the candle. ‘Lift up her skirts. I want to see her stummick.’

Mary hesitated, her brown eyes wide with fear of what her great-aunt might deduce.

‘Come on, girl.’

Kitty was said to be a witch, so rather than be cursed, Mary did as she was bidden, though she felt it wicked to expose her mother so.

Underneath the black woollen skirt were the ragged remains of a black and white striped petticoat. Mary lifted this and her mother’s stomach was exposed; she wore nothing else, other than her stockings.

Holding the candle so that it did not drip on Bridie’s bare flesh, Kitty ran her fingers over the sick woman’s stomach. She bent down to peer very carefully at it. Beneath the grime, she was able to see dark red blotches. Her lips tightened over her toothless mouth.

She felt down the rigid legs and her sly old face, for once, showed only a terrible sadness. Very gently she took the petticoat and skirt hems from Mary’s fingers and laid them back over Bridie. ‘You can look now,’ she told the male members of the family.

While she made her examination, James had retreated to the back of the tiny room. Now she turned to him.

‘’Ad any rats ’ere lately?’

‘There’s always rats, you know that,’ growled James.

‘Hm.’

Billy interjected, ‘Mam found a near-dead one in the court a while back. Proper huge it were – like a cat. She threw it in the midden with the rubbish.’

‘I knew it,’ muttered Great-aunt Kitty. ‘I seen it before. She’s got gaol fever, God help us all.’

A hissing sigh of fear went through the other members of the family.

‘Typhus?’ James whispered.

‘Aye. Haven’t seen it for a while. But I seen lots of it in me time.’

‘What’ll we do?’

‘Doctor from Dispensary might come.’

‘They’ll be shut by now.’

‘Well, first light tomorrer, you go after ’em. Aye, this’ll cause a pile of trouble.’

‘What?’

‘They’ll burn everythin’ you got, to stop it spreadin’.’ She pointed to Bridie, still staring at the blackened rafters above her head and chattering incoherently. ‘They’ll take ’er to the Infirmary no doubt – keep ’er away by herself.’

‘To die by herself?’ James was aghast.

That’s wot ’ospitals is for, int it? To die in.’ She gave a dry, sardonic laugh. ‘They daren’t leave ’er here, ’cos everybody in the court could get it from her.’

‘Christ!’ He rubbed his face with his hands. ‘Are you certain sure?’

‘Aye, I’m sure.’ She hesitated, and then said, ‘Well – almost.’ She looked round the little room, lit only by the candle in her hand, at its dirty brick walls, its earthen floor, its empty firegrate. ‘And you take care o’ yourself and our Bill,’ she warned. ‘Take all your clothes off and wash ’em, and kill every bloody louse and flea you can find. The cleaner you are, the better you’ll be.’ She turned to Mary, and asked, ‘Anybody else bin in here?’

‘Our Theresa and the baby was here. I sent ’em home just now.’ Mary began to cry.

‘Well, you got a copper in your house. You go home and put all your clothes in it – and Theresa’s and the baby’s and our Billy’s and your Dad’s stuff. And boil the lot real hard.’ She looked disparagingly at the fat, rather stupid girl in front of her. ‘And if it’s wool and it can’t be boiled, borrow an iron and iron it well. Go over all the seams – with a good, hot iron, mind you.’