Helen Forrester - Yes, Mama

While Elizabeth Woodman’s affairs were discussed in one of Liverpool’s worst slums, Elizabeth herself had wandered round her handsome Upper Canning Street house through the last days of her pregnancy, and viewed with dread the birth of her child.

She had done her best to get rid of the child. She had drunk bottle after bottle of gin and had sat for hours in hot baths, while Fanny stoked up the kitchen fire to heat the water in the tank behind it, so that Elizabeth could keep renewing the water in her fine mahogany-encased bath in the bathroom. To no purpose.

She had even contemplated throwing herself down the main staircase in order to dislodge the foetus, but when she had looked at the steepness of the flight her courage had failed her.

She watched with horror her expanding figure and worried at her husband’s complete lack of comment about it. As the months went remorselessly by, his silence began to terrify her. They had not slept together for months. He must know it’s not his, she agonized. Is he going to ignore the fact or will he throw me out at some point? And where shall I go? What shall I do?

Perhaps it will be born dead, she thought hopefully. Then he won’t have to say anything.

But Alicia Beatrix Mary had no intention of being born dead; Elizabeth, Polly and Fanny would all have their lives totally altered by her existence.

Fanny consulted Rosie, the Woodmans’ housemaid, about Polly. Rosie spoke to Mrs Martha Tibbs, the cook-housekeeper, an unmarried lady graced with the appellation of a wife because it was the custom.

In consideration of receiving Polly Ford’s first month’s wages, if she got the job, Mrs Tibbs graciously agreed to broach the subject of a wet-nurse with Elizabeth Woodman. Since nothing had been said to the domestic staff about the impending addition to the family, Mrs Tibbs went about the matter very delicately.

Bored to tears by three months’ confinement during the more obvious period of her pregnancy, anxious to keep the child away from her husband as much as possible, assuming it were born alive, Elizabeth was almost grateful to Mrs Tibbs and agreed to look at Polly.

It took the efforts of all her extended family to make Polly look respectable for the interview. She had a black skirt in which she had been married. A black bodice was borrowed from a distant cousin down the street; she had had it given to her by the draper whose tiny shop she cleaned. It had been eaten by moths at the back, but with Polly’s own black shawl over it, the holes would not show. A battered, black straw hat was acquired for a penny from a pedlar of secondhand clothes, after hard bargaining by Polly’s married sister, Mary. Polly’s mother washed and ironed her own apron to an unusual whiteness, so that Polly could wear it for the occasion. Polly had boots, though they were worn through at the bottom and were bursting round the little toes. ‘I’ll keep me feet under me skirt,’ said Polly dully.

Through all these preparations, Polly wept steadily. At her mother’s urging she suckled little Billy. ‘It’ll nourish ’im and it’ll keep the milk comin’, luv,’ her mother consoled her.

It was comforting to hold the small boy to her. Though as grubby as a sweep, he was a merry child, who laughed and crowed and tried to talk to her.

Before Polly could aspire to a job as an indoor servant, she had, somehow, to acquire a reference from another lady. At first, Polly’s mother had suggested that Mrs Tibbs’ recommendation would be enough, but, through Fanny, Mrs Tibbs herself insisted that Polly must produce a written reference.

‘Aye, she’s right,’ Polly agreed. Then, trying to make an effort for herself, she added, ‘Now I’ve got a hat, I could go and see that ould Mrs Stanley, and ask ’er.’

Before her marriage, Polly had cleaned the doorsteps and the brass bells and letterboxes of a number of elegant houses in Mount Pleasant. For five years, she had donkey-stoned the front steps of a Mrs Stanley, an ancient crone who claimed that she had once danced with King George IV. Mrs Stanley lived with a white cat and an elderly married pair of servants.

With feelings akin to terror, Polly pulled the bell of the servants’ entrance of Mrs Stanley’s house. The same bent, bald manservant she remembered answered it. He did not recognize her, and asked, ‘And what do you want?’

She told him.

‘I’ll ask the wife,’ he told her, and shut the door in her face.

She was almost ready to give up and go home, when a little kitchen-maid opened it and said shyly, ‘You’re to coom in.’

She was led into a well-scrubbed kitchen where, on a bare, deal table, a meal was laid for four. Bending over to poke the roaring kitchen fire was an elderly woman-servant. A good smell of roasting meat permeated the room; it made Polly’s mouth water.

The old woman straightened up. She wore a white, frilled cap tied under her chin and a grey uniform with a long, starched apron. Poker still in hand, she turned and said, ‘’Allo, Polly. What’s to do? Didn’t expect to see you again, after you was married.’

Polly explained her need for a reference. ‘To say I’m honest, like.’ She omitted to tell the woman that she had been widowed, because she thought she would start to cry again if she did so.

The older woman looked at her doubtfully. ‘Well, I’ll ask for yez,’ she said slowly. ‘I doubt she’ll even know your face, though. Ye ’ardly ever saw ’er, did yer?’

‘Not much,’ agreed Polly humbly.

‘I’ll go up. Sit down there.’ She pointed to a wooden chair set by the back entrance. Polly obediently sat on it.

A bell suddenly bounced on its spring in a corner of the ceiling and ting-a-linged impatiently. The manservant put on his jacket and went to answer it. The little kitchen-maid stirred the contents of an iron pot on the fire and carefully put the lid back on. A young woman in a pink-striped, housemaid’s dress put her head round the door leading to the rest of the house, and shouted, ‘Mary Jane, the Mistress wants her bath water. Hurry up.’

The kitchen-maid put her ladle down on to an old plate in the hearth. A somnolent kitchen cat slunk from the other end of the hearth and quietly licked it clean. The girl took a large ewer from a hook and swung it under the oven tap at the side of the huge kitchen fire. Boiling water belched into it. She grinned at Polly, as she waited for the water jug to fill.

Polly smiled faintly. Jaysus! Was she going to have to wait for the ould girl to bath and dress?

Two and a half hours later, by the clock hanging on the kitchen wall, Madam completed her toilet. The servants came at different times to eat their midday meal at the kitchen table. They ignored Polly as being so low that she was beneath their notice.

The morning-room bell tinkled. The manservant wiped his lips on the back of his hand, put on his black jacket and went upstairs. A few minutes later, he returned and said gruffly to Polly, ‘Mistress’ll see you.’

Her chest aching, her throat parched, her heart beating wildly from fright, Polly followed the old man along a dark passage and up two flights of stairs equally Stygian. ‘You’re lucky,’ he piped. ‘Mistress don’t bother with the likes of you that often.’

Polly kept her head down and did not answer. Surreptitiously, under her shawl, she scratched a bug bite on her arm. She was so inured to vermin bites that they did not usually irritate. Her mother had, however, insisted that she wash herself all over in a bucket of cold water, scrubbing her yellowed skin with a rough piece of cloth. It had made her itch. After that, both of them had gone over the seams of her clothes to kill any lice or bugs that she might be carrying. ‘You can’t help your hair,’ her mother had said. ‘I haven’t got no money to buy paraffin to kill the nits in it.’