Another Kind of Life Read online

  Mary: Summer 1898

  MARY HAD LITTLE difficulty in getting used to her duties at 12 Fortwilliam Park. She welcomed the nightly exhaustion, the mind-numbing torpor induced by ceaseless physical work. She fell into her bed each night with no thought for anything but sleep. Her hands gradually grew tougher and dirtier, ingrained with coal-dust and black lead from cleaning the range. Her mind learned to fill itself with thoughts of the next job: washing-up after breakfast, cleaning the floor, tidying up in expectation of Madam’s daily visit to the kitchen to give her orders. Then came cleaning the bedrooms and emptying the chamber pots, washing the varnished paintwork with tea-water, brushing damp tea leaves into the carpets, stoking the range and the fires. Mary was grateful for the rigour of this new existence. She was fed, watered and housed. If she didn’t receive kindness, at least she learned to be content with indifference: it meant that as long as she did her work, she didn’t have to spend her life looking over her shoulder.

  Two years after her arrival in Fortwilliam Park, Mary came home one Sunday evening to great excitement in the kitchen. Cook and Miss Mulqueen were talking animatedly, their eyes bright, faces rosy. Two sherry schooners stood empty on the table between them.

  Miss Mulqueen beamed at Mary as she propped her dripping umbrella beside the range.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Mary.

  ‘Madam is in the family way again – the wee one is due to be born sometime in October.’

  They both nodded at her, looking as self-important and pleased with themselves as if they had just announced the arrival of the Messiah. For a brief moment, Mary thought how sad it was, that these two women regarded the event as though they were family. As it was, those who lived below stairs rarely saw the children. They were Nanny’s preserve, and she guarded them jealously. Mary thought privately that Mrs Long was a little afraid of her. Stout, plain and devoted, Nanny ruled the roost. In the mornings Madam would hand the children over to the schoolroom and the strangely timid governess; in the afternoons they were all Nanny’s, for long walks in the local park, or doing a carefully planned variety of activities with a view to improving their little minds.

  The first time Mary had seen the governess, Miss Taylor, she knew her to be a bitterly disappointed woman. Her chin was sharp, the corners of her mouth turned down, creased like parentheses. Her hands were large and impatient. Perhaps she was always worrying about something, or perhaps life simply hadn’t fulfilled its promise. Mary sometimes thought about her, or Nanny, or Cook on the winter mornings when she got up as early as five-thirty to clean the grates, open the flues and set the fires going again. Sorry for yer troubles, Mary would think grimly, scraping the tarry residue from the inside of the flue, her hands numb with cold and effort: life left an awful lot of us behind when it handed out its parcels of good fortune.

  Mary often felt sorry for the children: their lives seemed to be a constant round of duties. She had never seen them play ball in the garden, chase the dog or hug a brother or sister . . . She stopped herself.

  Miss Mulqueen and Cook were still looking at her. Maybe they were right to be joyful: good or bad, this was as close as they’d ever come to their own hearth and home – as close as she’d ever come, too. Hadn’t she passed up all opportunity of family, of children – hadn’t that been her choice? She tried to appear enthusiastic. Luckily, they weren’t all that interested in her reaction.

  ‘Didn’t you use to sew?’

  Cook asked the question, looking over at Mary with curiosity. Miss Mulqueen was impatient now, her eyes eager.

  ‘Aye,’ Mary said slowly.

  She wasn’t sure what she was letting herself in for. Miss Mulqueen clasped her hands delightedly.

  ‘I shall tell Madam at once. She asked me to find someone to prepare a new layette for the baby. Would you be able to do that?’

  ‘I would, surely.’

  Mary began to like the idea: perhaps if she were to have such new duties, old ones such as emptying the chamber pots or stoking the range or carrying coal could be done by a step-boy.

  ‘I’ll tell Madam.’

  Miss Mulqueen was gone like a shot. Cook looked put-out. Perhaps she was cross that the housekeeper had stolen her thunder; perhaps she was feeling left out; or perhaps she simply wanted more sherry. Mary had often seen the gleam that was in her eye now, the high spot of colour on each cheek. She would never have put two and two together until today.

  The older woman stood up from the table now, her vast skirts in full sail like a Spanish galleon. She limped her way over to one of the cupboards which was always kept locked. She produced the bottle of sherry and a new glass. She poured for Mary, with a slightly unsteady hand.

  ‘You’re a good wee girl,’ she said, not lifting her eyes from the bottle.

  Mary was dumbfounded. She felt foolish as her eyes began to fill. It was the first expression of affection that she had had from anyone since she had refused Myles and left Carrick Hill. Cecilia appeared insistently in front of her, young, childlike, as she was before the mill unleashed its terrors. Tears began to roll slowly down Mary’s cheeks. Cook was startled. Then her puffy face seemed to soften.

  ‘Sit down now, and get that into ye.’

  Mary sat and sipped, feeling the warmth grow in her stomach. She was disturbed by this return of feeling. For two years now, she had experienced existence in its simplest animal forms of work, food and shelter. The young Cecilia had hardly crossed her mind. She was there, always, in the background, almost hidden among the deepest bits of Mary’s life. But the live Cecilia had always been absent; only her damaged and dying self ever nudged its way into Mary’s consciousness. It had been easy enough to scrub it away on the front step, or beat it out of the dusty carpets. This was different. It was as though Cecilia had come back to demand her rightful place in her sister’s memory.

  Mary didn’t know whether to be glad or frightened.

  Sophia: Spring 1899

  SOPHIA THOUGHT ABOUT it for a long time before she went knocking on Hannah’s door. She was never quite sure these days what to expect from her eldest daughter. She had become fiercely private over the last several months, withdrawing from all family occasions as soon as it was polite to do so, giving others the minimum of herself. A calculated amount, Sophia had often reflected, never enough to please, but never so little that offence could reasonably be taken. Even when she was there, she had developed the capacity to detach herself from everybody, with an air just this side of aloofness. Her eyes would look dimmer, somehow, their usual blue light suffused with grey. She seemed to have little time even for her sisters. Sophia was aware, particularly, of how much Eleanor missed her. May was much more separate, always had been. But the youngest girl had taken to wandering around the house like a pale, lost soul, afraid, it seemed, even to touch the piano.

  Sophia had taken care not to cross Hannah; she knew that the girl needed time to grow into the life that had been shaped for her. After his initial anger and impatience, Edward seemed to regard the matter as closed. He was simply not prepared to discuss it. This had more to do, Sophia was sure, with his own never-acknowledged sense of shame than with his daughter’s defiance. His only response was that Hannah would do as she was told. He would grant her a little time only to learn acceptance, to submit to the will of her parents. The decision was made, finished with.

  The dark burn of Hannah’s anger and contempt had eased somewhat since their visit to the MacBrides in Belfast, Sophia was sure of that. Her daughter no longer avoided her eye, or left the room at once, shrouded in resentment, whenever her mother entered. In some strange way, Sophia realized, Hannah regarded what she saw as her mother’s betrayal of her as a worse and more heinous sin than anything her father had ever done. Sophia had reflected long and bitterly on the irony of her daughter’s outrage. She, Sophia, had done only what was expedient: none of this would have been necessary but for Edward. She sighed impatiently, stopping herself from going down that well-travelled road again: Hanna
h’s words still kept her awake at night, cutting into her heart with the accuracy and precision of the surgeon’s knife.

  I hope you got a good price.

  Once the house had settled into its night-time quiet, the secret creakings and sighings finally stilled, Sophia put her needlework to one side and climbed the stairs to the first-floor landing and her daughter’s bedroom. She knocked on the door, more smartly than she had intended, and waited. She felt the first faint stirrings of panic. Now that she was here, what was she going to say? What words could she possibly use to bridge the gap between the two of them? Even if Hannah no longer hated her, she had certainly kept herself aloof from any of Sophia’s recent attempts to console her, to mother her. She felt her heartbeat quicken. She tried to breathe more deeply. No matter what, her daughter needed her now, even if she refused to know it. She steadied herself, comforted by her sense of duty. Who else could explain to her daughter what would be expected of her, demanded of her as a married woman? She knew that some, including Edward, regarded this as a husband’s, rather than a mother’s duty. But she wasn’t convinced. Her own experience had taught her otherwise. Nevertheless, she was filled with sudden misgiving, and decided to turn away, to think about it again more carefully, to come back when she was more prepared, perhaps even more sure of a welcome. She needed to wait until courage came to her once more.

  But Hannah opened her door.

  ‘Mother!’

  She was surprised to see Sophia standing there, looking uncertain, her hands clasped in the way that Hannah had come to associate with anxiety. She looked altogether different from her usual daily self.

  ‘May I come in?’

  She was here now, and would do her best.

  Hannah opened her door wider. She felt a sudden sympathy for her mother, something she had not felt for some time for either of her parents. For months, her anger had burned brightly; there had been reminders everywhere of her thwarted ambition, her stunted talent. She hadn’t been able to bear even the sight of the piano, or the sound of anyone else playing it. She had torn down the stairs one Sunday afternoon in a fury and dragged Eleanor by the hair off the piano stool, enraged by the child’s playing. It was only when she saw the young girl sprawled on the floor, her small body made almost comical by the ungainly tangle of legs and waving arms, that Hannah’s anger had deflated. She had been shocked by the violence of her emotions, appalled at her treatment of gentle Eleanor. Her youngest sister had said nothing, nothing at all. She had sobbed into her sleeve, resisting Hannah’s remorseful embrace, refusing to meet her eyes. But all that had been long before Belfast.

  ‘May I sit?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Hannah was puzzled by her mother’s diffidence. She waited for the older woman to speak, content to sit in silence. She knew that this had something to do with Charles.

  ‘I wanted to speak to you about your wedding.’

  Hannah nodded. She was to be married in less than two months. Her mother and Constance MacBride had agreed that it was no longer fashionable to believe in long engagements.

  ‘The next few weeks are going to be busy; very busy indeed.’

  Hannah wondered what was going to keep everyone in Dublin so occupied, but still she said nothing. She knew that she would live in Holywood, a seaside town some four miles outside Belfast; that Charles and his mother would find a suitable house to rent; that there would be a small, elegant wedding from home: family only. Why was her mother so convinced of her own busyness?

  ‘I wanted to have this time to speak to you before we . . . all of us . . . got . . . distracted.’

  Hannah felt her face begin to colour. She didn’t want to believe it, but it seemed that her mother was going to speak to her about married life, about the things which passed between men and women: the physical act of which she already had some confused knowledge, knowledge she had long ago dismissed in all its enormity and improbability. Girls in school had whispered to each other about such things in the darkness of the dormitory. Giggling and snorting into pillows, the older ones had talked about men and women ‘cleaving unto one another’, becoming ‘one flesh’, about a man ‘knowing’ a woman: their talk had shocked Hannah. She hadn’t wanted to know then, hadn’t wanted to listen. She felt the same now. She wanted to put her hands over her ears, or disappear under the blankets like a child. She was afraid that her mother was going to spoil the first stirrings of romance which she had felt as she’d sat beside Charles in his mother’s garden. Her first tentative thrillings of love were a world apart from the crude, knowing talk of schoolgirls. She was just becoming used to the feeling that her life might be bearable after all, that she could do as her father and mother had bid her. If that feeling went away, if her mother did anything to spoil the tiny shoots of tenderness she was nurturing for Charles, then she, Hannah, would no longer be able to endure it.

  ‘Please don’t, Mother.’

  Strangely, her embarrassment seemed to make Sophia all the more determined to continue.

  ‘I cannot leave you ignorant, Hannah. I may have many failings as your mother, but I feel that this must be spoken of between us.’

  Sophia’s voice was soft. For a moment, Hannah remembered how close they had once been, how her mother had trusted and confided in her, perhaps even needed her. She had a brief, blinding memory of that train journey from Belfast to Dublin five years ago, feeling grown up, a true confidante, while May slept and Eleanor sucked her thumb for comfort. All that closeness was gone now, destroyed by her father and mother’s usurping of her life. She wondered if it would ever be possible to forgive her, if the ties between them could ever be the same again.

  ‘I’m listening.’

  Hannah sat across from her mother on the small padded chair beside her dressing table. She would obey, would give her outward compliance as she had learned to do over the last, painful few months. Her voice and expression were deliberately cool, controlled. She waited. A word from her would take the chalky strain out of her mother’s face, would let the blood rush back to the high, prominent cheekbones. But she would say nothing, for now. She felt almost elated by the sense of power she had over this woman. It was good – a kind of revenge. Sophia’s hands were a waxy white, knuckles sharp and shiny, fingers now interlaced. Hannah noted, with increasing detachment, that they were trembling.

  ‘You will soon be a married woman.’

  Here she smiled across at Hannah. She got no response.

  ‘What you need to understand, my dear, is that what happens between a man and a woman on their wedding night is part of God’s plan, but not knowing can make it frightening.’

  Hannah still didn’t speak. She kept her gaze steady, holding her mother’s reluctant grey eyes. It was Sophia who finally looked down at her hands.

  ‘When a man joins his body to a woman’s, it is warm and natural, and, for many people, it eventually becomes rather wonderful.’

  Sophia looked straight at her daughter, and now Hannah wanted to look away. Her mother’s expression startled her into pity, and she did not want to feel that. She could see the chasm between what her mother’s marriage had become and the hopes with which she must have started out as a young woman. Or had Sophia, too, been given no option? Had she also had her choices constrained, her life shaped by the circumstances of social and family needs? Hannah felt suddenly terrified for herself – would she be speaking like this to her own daughter one day, with more than twenty years’ accumulated disappointments and bitterness behind her? She had the sense that married love had never become ‘rather wonderful’ for her mother. Hannah wanted to stop her, before this intimacy became any more painful. As it was, the air in the room was charged with emotion, her mother’s eyes were much too bright. Hannah did not want her to cry; she couldn’t bear to comfort her.

  ‘Mama, I think I understand what happens, and I hope I will be prepared. Thank you for talking to me.’

  Sophia heard ‘Mama’ and wanted to weep. Ever since she and Edwar
d had brought her home from school on that dreadful day, Hannah had refused to call them ‘Papa’ or ‘Mama’. Instead, she had carefully articulated ‘Mother’ and ‘Father’ with all the calculation and precision of an insult.

  Sophia stood up slowly. She stretched out her hand and touched her daughter’s face briefly.

  ‘Just remember this, my dear – I’ve always tried to do my best.’

  She left the room at once, closing the door gently behind her. Hannah didn’t even have time to say ‘goodnight’. The room seemed very empty after she had gone, and Hannah felt an unaccountable sadness. She was edgy and restless for the rest of the evening. Everything around her irritated her. She felt hemmed in, claustrophobic. The gas lamp was burning smokily; it threw strange shadows on her wall as she moved about the room. She pulled books off her shelves, leafing through them impatiently, but the light was too dim for reading. She found herself wanting answers to questions she didn’t even know how to ask. Nothing gave her peace.

  She wanted her sisters. But May wouldn’t be back from school until the weekend. Perhaps Eleanor would still be awake. The child had come to her so often in the past, snuggling down beside her, in search of comfort. Now the tables had turned. Hannah opened her door as quietly as she could, and tiptoed up the three steps to the second landing. She tapped softly on her sister’s door.

  Now it was time for Eleanor to look after her.

  Eleanor’s Journal

  THE ENTIRE HOUSEHOLD was in an uproar for weeks. May and I might never have existed, for all the attention anyone paid us. Mama had said that the wedding would be a small one, an intimate affair, for the immediate family only. I remember wondering how life could possibly be any more frantic had the proposed party been a larger one.