Yes, Mama. Helen Forrester

smile, and said nothing. His maths teacher, old Fancy Moppit, wanted him to take more chemistry and maths and think about going to university. He wondered, now, if his father would pay for university.

      ‘Have you heard from Edward lately?’ he asked Elizabeth. ‘I got a card from him at Easter, but I haven’t heard since.’

      ‘Not got a card, Charles – received a card.’

      Charles grimaced, and said, ‘Yes, Mama.’

      ‘I heard from Edward quite recently. He is in Burma – and he’s a full Lieutenant, now.’

      ‘Oh, cheers!’

      Charles was glad to be home for the remainder of the summer. Though nothing very interesting ever happened there, Mrs Tibbs produced all his favourite dishes and his mother didn’t mind how much he read. Probably the family would go, as usual, for two weeks’ seaside holiday in North Wales, and he would be able to add to his extensive collection of shells; he already had a glass case full of them, each neatly tagged with its Latin name.

      After he had been down to the kitchen to see Mrs Tibbs, he climbed the five flights of stairs from the basement to the top floor, to see his new sister, Alicia. ‘Her nurse’s name is Polly. Be polite to her,’ his mother had instructed.

      Rosie and Fanny were left to toil up the stairs with his trunks.

      ‘Holy God! Wot’s he got in ’em?’ puffed Fanny, as they paused for rest on the second landing.

      ‘Books,’ opined Rosie. ‘Proper little bookworm, he is.’

      Polly was glad to have a young boy sleeping in the back room across the landing. As Fanny had said, it could feel ghosty away at the top of the house; Rosie and Fanny shared a basement room and Mrs Tibbs had her own private bed-sitting room off the kitchen.

      In case Charles came into the nursery while she was feeding Alicia, Polly took to wearing a shawl over her shoulders so that she could cover her breasts. She had been instructed by Elizabeth to keep Charles out of the day nursery at such moments, but, as Fanny said, ‘If he don’t learn now how a baby’s fed, he may not know never.’ So Charles learned a few interesting facts of life that summer. He also watched her being bathed, one day, and observed that she did not have a penis; this confirmed what other boys had told him, that girls did not have such appendages. He found it very peculiar.

      The day after his return, he went out to visit Florence in the company of his mother and Miss Sarah Webb, and attended Alicia’s christening. He noted uneasily that Florence was uncommonly stout, but he dared not comment on it.

      To Florence’s mystification, Humphrey and Uncle Harold and his wife, Vera, did not attend the christening; they had urgent business to attend to in London that day. Elizabeth bought the customary silver christening mug and had it engraved, To Alicia Beatrix Mary, from her loving parents, July 1886.

      Elizabeth had written to Andrew and his wife, inviting them to the christening. She received no reply and, after the christening tea, she had retired to Florence’s privy and wept at the snub. She wondered if Mrs Crossing had even been shown the invitation.

      As the long summer holiday progressed, Charles began to feel bored. He inquired of his mother when they would be taking their holiday in Wales. He was taken aback when Elizabeth snapped at him sharply that Papa was far too busy this year to think about holidays.

      Feeling contrite about her peevishness, Elizabeth asked him if he would like to spend a few days with his Aunt Clara at West Kirby.

      ‘Not really, Mama,’ he replied. Though Aunt Clara lived by the sea, her many ailments did not make her appealing to him.

      He began to accompany Polly when she wheeled Alicia in her pram through Princes Park. He liked Polly; she had never seen either shells or seaweed or even sand and had shown a most respectful interest when he had explained what they were.

      In the park, she always paused for a little chat with a young gardener weeding the flower beds; he regularly managed to be working somewhere along the usual route of their walk, and Charles teased Polly about him.

      In the course of one of their walks, Charles discovered that Polly could not read. He stopped in the middle of the sandy carriageway, and stared up at the handsome young woman. ‘Really?’

      She smiled down at him mischievously. ‘Aye. I don’t know nothin’, ’cept lookin’ after Miss Alicia and a few things like that.’

      He began walking again, kicking a stone along in front of him. ‘I’d have thought you would be able to read easily. Servants always know so much.’

      ‘I suppose they do – folks like Mrs Tibbs. But me? I only scrubbed doorsteps and cleaned brasses and helped me Mam sell fents in the market sometimes, afore I were married.’

      ‘What are fents?’

      ‘Bits of old or damaged cloth – for dusters, like.’

      ‘I see. I didn’t know you were married.’

      ‘I’m not no more …’ Her voice faltered. In the weeks since she had been with the Woodmans, she had wept fairly constantly, alone in her windowless garret. Her only comfort had been the delicious sensation of Alicia’s contented sucking at her breast. ‘Me oosband,’ she picked up again, ‘he were killed in the docks.’

      ‘How dreadful!’ Charles was genuinely shocked. He understood that to be a widow was very hard; even the Bible said that you had to look after the widowed and the fatherless.

      ‘It were proper awful,’ Polly confided to him. ‘And me baby died – so I come to look after Miss Alicia.’ She smiled sadly down at the sleeping child in the old basketware pram in which Charles himself had been wheeled as an infant.

      ‘Well, I’m glad you did come. These hols are boring enough. Say, would you like to learn to read? It’s easy, once you know how. I’ve still got my first books up in my bedroom – and I bet there are some girls’ books in Flo’s old bedroom. I could teach you in the evenings.’

      So that summer Polly learned to read and discovered a wonderful dream world.

      She also learned to sew better than she had previously done. Elizabeth sent up to the nursery loads of sheets and other household linens, demanding that they be neatly darned or patched; servants should be kept busy, according to Elizabeth.

      At first, Polly had been appalled at the huge pile of mending, but Elizabeth had told Rosie to instruct her, particularly on how to patch and how to turn a sheet sides to middle, and they both spent long evening hours by Polly’s single candle carefully weaving their needles in and out of the heavy linen cloth.

      When Alicia had acquired a pattern of sleep and it was fairly certain that she would continue to sleep for an hour or two, Polly took a piece of sewing down to the big basement kitchen and sat for a little while with Rosie and Mrs Tibbs round the roaring fire in the kitchen range. ‘I’ll go crackers if I don’t have a bit of a jangle with somebody,’ she told Mrs Tibbs, and Mrs Tibbs had agreed that a little gossip was necessary to one’s sanity. Except for minor squabbles, they got along together fairly well and they would talk about the neighbours and their servants, about the Woodman family and their own families, while Fanny toiled through the washing-up and the scouring of the big, soot-covered iron saucepans.

      From these agreeable sessions, Polly began to learn how such a fine house was run, how you could acquire a few perks to take home, like a half-used tablet of soap, nearly finished bottles of wine or perfume, odds and ends like buttons, discarded in the wastepaper basket. In addition Mr Bittle, the gardener, according to Fanny, would sometimes provide a few windfall apples or pears or even a seedling geranium in a pot. ‘Me auntie were made up when I bring ’er a little geranium,’ she confided to Polly, as she sat down on a nursery chair to rest, after bringing up a hod of coal. ‘Mrs Tibbs makes quite a bit on the side, Rosie says. She’ll take a slice or two off a joint or a little bitty butter or cheese – not much,