Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [35]
Her mistress clearly picked up on Beth’s tension. ‘I have had some previous experience,’ she said with a gay little laugh. ‘I used to feed my younger brothers and sisters regularly. I just haven’t had any encounters with babies or small children since I married.’
‘You are really good at it,’ Beth said admiringly. ‘I was scared stiff of Molly at first. I’d never even held a newborn baby before, much less fed and changed one.’
‘I must try changing her too,’ Mrs Langworthy said, her face all aglow. ‘Babies are much more agreeable to take care of than grumpy old men.’
Mrs Bruce turned away so that neither Beth nor her mistress would see the tears well up in her eyes. She sensed it could only end badly because Beth would move on before long and take Molly with her.
All through the autumn, at Christmas and into the New Year of 1895, Mrs Bruce watched Beth and Molly gradually working their way into everyone’s hearts at Falkner Square. She knew it wasn’t her imagination because she too was falling under their spell.
It was hard not to love someone who could sing even when she was sluicing filthy napkins. Her merry laugh enlivened the basement; her eagerness to help everyone with their chores created a happy atmosphere. She would gladly spend the afternoon cleaning silver, pressing Mr Edward’s clothes or reading to old Mr Langworthy, even though she wasn’t paid to do any of these extra duties. Perhaps it was because she preferred to work than be alone with Molly in her rooms, but whatever the reason, Mrs Bruce liked having her around.
They had celebrated Molly’s first birthday before Christmas in the kitchen. Cook made a special iced cake and a trifle, Kathleen the maid had blown up balloons, and even Sam and Mr Edward came home earlier to be there. Beth had made Molly a new pink dress, which she immediately daubed with trifle. She had been able to walk a few steps holding on to someone’s hands for some little time, but that afternoon she took four or five steps unaided to reach Mrs Langworthy.
It was undoubtedly because there was a child in the house that Mr Edward brought home a Christmas tree, for they’d never had one before. Sam fixed it securely in a large tub and placed it by the drawing-room window, and Beth helped Mrs Langworthy trim it with candles and glass baubles.
As always in the past, various relatives came for Christmas dinner and Sam was on hand to carry old Mr Langworthy down to the dining room. But although the festivities upstairs were much the same as in previous years, downstairs it was a far jollier affair.
Once the dinner was over upstairs, old Mr Langworthy had been taken back to his room and the master and mistress were entertaining their guests in the drawing room, the staff dinner took place in the kitchen.
Mrs Bruce asked Sam, as the only male, to sit at the head of the table and carve the goose. Mrs Bruce sat at the foot, with Cook on one side of her and Molly perched up on a box on a chair on the other. Kathleen and Beth, both wearing paper hats, sat either side of Sam. Whether it was the wine they drank, or just that there were three more people than usual around the table, the laughter started when Sam fooled around pretending to be a surgeon as he attacked the goose with the carving knife, and it didn’t stop.
Cook didn’t live in but had lodgings nearby. She’d been in service since she was a young girl, always in households with a big staff. She related hilarious stories about some of the blunders they made, and how the rest of the staff covered them up.
Sam told them tales too about people who came into the bar at the Adelphi Hotel. He could mimic their voices