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Humphrey chewed his moustache and turned to look out of the lace-draped window. His brother and nephews joined him – babies were not very interesting, particularly when they were girls.
Vera pursed her lips and made no further comment. She brought out from her reticule an ivory ring with two silver bells attached to it. ‘Here, Alicia,’ she said. ‘Here is a pretty present from Father Christmas for you.’
Alicia clutched at the ring, and Elizabeth sighed with relief.
When, the following year, the Queen’s Jubilee was being celebrated in Liverpool, Elizabeth’s sister, Clara, came to stay and to join in the festivities. She was older than Elizabeth and lived in a small house left her by their father, in the village of West Kirby on the Wirral Peninsula. She had been ill with bronchitis at the time of Alicia’s birth and this had left her with a painful cough, making travelling too arduous for her. Thanks to the patient ministrations of her companion-help, she was now feeling better, and had come to see her new niece.
She was a spinster and sometimes quite lonely. When she saw the little girl in Polly’s arms, she said impulsively to Elizabeth, ‘You must bring her to stay with me. The sea air will put some colour into those pale, little cheeks.’
When Elizabeth demurred that the presence of a young child might put too much strain on her delicate health, the older woman replied, ‘Let Polly come as well.’
So Alicia’s early childhood was enlivened by visits to the seaside, occasionally accompanied by Elizabeth, more often by Polly. Though frail and slow-moving, Aunt Clara taught her niece how to build sandcastles and took her to collect shells and to paddle in the shallow pools left by the tide.
Polly had never seen the sea before and was, at first, terrified of its bouncing waves. She soon discovered with Alicia the joys of paddling and she, too, looked forward to these little holidays.
Humphrey had invested money in a railway line to link West Kirby with Liverpool. Because it failed to draw enough passengers and part of it had to run in a tunnel under the Mersey, which was more expensive than expected, he suffered a resounding financial loss. When, finally, it did go through, it was a joyous occasion for Alicia, because dear delicate Aunt Clara could then so easily visit the house in Upper Canning Street. Humphrey was consoled by the fact that a piece of land that he had, years before, bought in West Kirby suddenly became immensely valuable because it lay close to the new station. He sold it for housing development, at a handsome profit.
IV
‘Wot you goin’ to do when our Allie goes to school?’ Fanny asked Polly, as, one night, she snatched a moment in the nursery to rest her aching feet. She had asked a similar question when, at eighteen months of age, Alicia had finally been weaned.
At that time, Polly had been very troubled. The under-gardener in the park, of whom she had had hopes, had failed to appear during two successive walks. According to a surly park-keeper, he had been dismissed for impudence. Polly’s dream of presiding over a tied cottage with a small pigsty vanished with him. A brief encounter with a regular soldier, also met in the park, had come to an abrupt end when his regiment was sent to India. Statistics were against Polly’s ever marrying again; the district had far more women than it had men.
The longer Polly continued to live in the comfort of the nursery attic, the less she wanted to return to the teeming slum in which she had been raised. A high standard of living, she found, was very easy to get used to. She had been thankful when Elizabeth had used her, in part, to replace Maisie.
Fanny was now a small, pinched seventeen-year-old and had replaced Rosie as a housemaid. Rosie had married the milkman as soon as he was satisfied that she was pregnant; a working man had to be certain that his wife could have children to maintain him in his old age.
A tweenie was no longer employed to care for fires, empty slops and carry water. Instead, Humphrey ordered Elizabeth to employ a charwoman, who came early in the morning to clean out the fireplaces and remake the fires. She also filled all the coal scuttles. To cut down on the carrying of water, more use was made of the bathroom taps, though the servants were still not allowed to wash themselves or use the lavatory in the bathroom. Elizabeth ended a custom of centuries, abandoned the chamber-pot under her bed and trailed along to the bathroom; she felt it was a real hardship.
Safe in the nursery with Polly, for many years Alicia understood little of the bitterness which lay between her mother and Humphrey Woodman. She learned early, however, from Polly that Papa was to be feared and that she should keep out of his way. As soon as the child could talk Polly taught her that the pretty lady who lived downstairs was to be obeyed without question, no matter how unhappy her decisions made little girls and nannies. Nannies said, ‘Yes, Ma’am, of course, Ma’am.’ Little girls said, ‘Yes, Mama,’ she instructed.
Alicia’s first day at Miss Schreiber’s Preparatory School approached and Polly was again worried.
‘I suppose I’ll have to look for another place,’ she sighed to Fanny. ‘It’ll fairly kill me to leave little Allie – she’s my baby more’n anybody else’s.’ She glanced across to where Alicia was kneeling on a chair at the table. She was quarrelling with Florence’s elder son, Frank. They were playing Snakes and Ladders and she was protesting to the boy that he must slide down every snake on which his counter landed. He retorted that if he wanted to he could slide down only every other one. A fight threatened, and Polly got up to settle the squabble.
‘Now, you play nicely, Master Frank, or I’ll send you home.’
Frank looked at her mutinously, picked up the board and tipped the counters off it, then slid down from his chair to go to the rocking-horse. Still watching Polly, he climbed on to it and began to rock as hard as he could. ‘Cheat!’ shouted Alicia, and, aggrieved, went to sit on Polly’s lap.
‘You could wait at table.’ Fanny grinned wryly at Polly. ‘The Missus says I’m even worse’n Rosie was.’
‘I don’t know how neither.’
‘Ask the Missus to train you. You and her is as thick as thieves – she’ll jump at the idea. Now the Master is wantin’ to have more dinner parties, she’ll need a proper parlourmaid.’
‘’Ow d’you know he wants more people in?’
Fanny looked wise, ‘I ’ear it all.’
When Master Charles came home for the summer holidays, soon after Alicia’s fifth birthday, he found his old friend, Polly, waiting at table. For the first time, Alicia was allowed to have lunch with him and with his mother in the dining-room. He noticed, uneasily, that Elizabeth was most impatient with the little girl, as the child floundered over the various knives and forks. He teased her gently that she would soon be a grown-up young lady and the threatening tears turned to a shy giggle.
‘I’m going to school soon,’ she confided proudly, and wondered if she dare ask for another spoonful of strawberry jelly. She looked up at Polly, hovering over her mother, water-jug in hand, and decided not to. She had long since joined the silent conspiracy of servants in the kitchen; she knew that after the meal she could go down to the basement to ask Mrs Tibbs for a bit more and would be given it gladly.
After this first venture at lunch in the dining-room, she asked Polly, ‘Why are you dressed up differently in the dining-room?’
‘’Cos as well as lookin’ after you, you cheeky little bugger, I got to be the parlourmaid in a parlourmaid’s uniform.’
Miss Schreiber, at the preparatory school, was horrified when, one morning in September, Alicia called a teasing boy a cheeky little bugger. For the first time in her life, the child received a sound slap. She learned quickly that there was more than one English language.
Alicia tended to be secretive and very quiet when in her mother’s company. Miss Schreiber’s complaint forced Elizabeth to pay