Chapter 2
The hope of soon being reunited with Will, or at least reaching his mother, had kept Maggie moving along the winding roads from Portsmouth to the first village of Ashton.
When that proved to be the wrong place, she changed her strategy.
Winter was coming. Even now, the heat was gone from the long evenings as soon as the sun dipped below the horizon.
If she had to find lodgings for herself and the children during the winter, then she must make more than the few coins she had picked up on her way north.
Having made the decision between one village and the next, she put it into practice at the first opportunity, asking at both inns and the three major houses if there was any work available.
One of the inns took her on to clean rooms and empty slop pails.
For one week, she told them. After that, she said, she must be off once more on her search.
With Eva on her back and Billy tagging behind, she managed the heavy work with ease, and a week later set off the next Ashton with several more shillings in her purse and a warmer coat for each child to keep them comfortable in the sometimes-cold wind.
The second Ashton was as disappointing as the first, but Maggie got two night’s work at the inn, and moved on the third.
Thus it went through the autumn and on into early winter.
When the snow came, she would have to be settled, but meanwhile, she moved from village to village, stopping to work whenever her money ran low, and at every village called Ashton or something similar, asking for the Parker family. All to no avail.
She was between Ashtons in early December when, on the strength of a stint as a maid at yet another inn, she was offered temporary work at the local great house, where they needed extra servants during a house party.
At first, she thought she’d have to turn the job down, though the wages were excellent.
But another woman overheard her telling the hiring steward about her children.
“I reckon they could stay with Ma,” she said. “She’s looking after me own young uns, while I earn a few coins, so two more wouldn’t matter to her none, and she could do with the pennies.” The woman introduced herself as Frannie, and offered to take Maggie to visit “Ma” immediately.
“If she could put you up at night,” said the steward, “I shall add two shillings a day to the wages, for where I could find you a bed, I do not know. Mind you, you’ll have to be at your post by five in the morning, and will not be home until after the guests have had their dinner.”
Frannie’s mother proved to be a kind woman whom Eva took to straight away, and the other children were twins of Billy’s age, so Maggie went off to work the following morning with a light heart.
If she saw out the two weeks of the house party, she would earn the princely sum of eighteen shillings!
Four shillings of that would go Frannie’s mother, but fourteen shillings would feed her little family for weeks, if she was careful.
It was hard work, but in some ways, it was also a holiday.
No walking for hours with Eva on her back and the wheelbarrow before her.
No need to find dry spaces through the day to feed the children or to change a wet clout.
And she enjoyed the walks with Frannie in the pre-dawn quiet and the velvet dark of the late evening.
After the first three days of the house party, the servants settled into a routine—those who belonged to the house, the temporary hires, and servants of guests all learning what they could expect from one another.
Hearing how some of the guests behaved toward the servants, Maggie was pleased to be working where she didn’t see them.
In the morning, she was one of several maids assigned to the drawing room, the little parlors, the billiards room, and other gathering spaces before any of the guests were awake.
They tidied, cleaned, laid fires, and set the rooms up for whatever use the mistress of the house had planned for the day.
After that work was finished, she was sent wherever she was most needed, one day helping in the kitchen, the next cleaning the rooms of the senior servants, the third ironing a great pile of linen that had come back from the wash.
They were long days, and she missed the children, for she was gone before they were awake and home late at night.
But the camaraderie of the servants’ hall was pleasant.
And if some of the menservants were inclined to regard her with lustful eyes, Maggie had been putting soldiers in their place ever since she first began to develop a woman’s shape.
Those who did not desist at a pleasant refusal soon found themselves outmatched, though she only once had to resort to stern measures.
The man she kicked in the crotch, a visiting valet, complained to the butler when he had uncurled from the ball he’d made of himself as he cradled his injured parts.
Maggie, nothing cowed, told them she had refused the man and he had ignored her warnings.
“I do not like to hurt people,” she said, “but I’ve spent the past twenty years at war, first with my father and then with my husband.
I’ve been taught to defend myself from men who think women are playthings.
He got what he deserved, and if you disapprove, sir and madam, I’ll take my wages for the past three days, and leave. ”
“That will not be necessary,” said the housekeeper, and she told the butler that Maggie was a good worker, and got on well with the other servants—even the men who had approached her and been refused.
They sent Maggie back to her work, and she heard no more about it.
Then, on the fifth day, a lady’s maid of one of the guests fell down the stairs and broke her arm. The housekeeper, looking harried, called the temporary servants together. “Do any of you have any experience as a lady’s maid?” She asked the question, but did not sound hopeful.
Surely, this would be a chance to earn a few extra coins?
“I have acted as maid to the wives of several officers,” Maggie said.
“I can dress hair and press fine garments without damaging them. Mend them, too.” And the wives had always given her a vail for her efforts—sometimes a shilling, sometimes half a crown, on one red letter occasion, a third-guinea worth seven whole shillings.
Not that she expected such bounty to happen again, but just imagine!
“You will be serving two ladies,” said the housekeeper. “They are sisters and share both a room and a maid. You will need to sleep in the suite’s dressing room to be available to them at all hours.”
Maggie didn’t like the sound of that. Not seeing her children at all for more than a week?
But then, they were not seeing her now, even though she slept with them in the same bed but left before they woke.
And Frannie’s mother assured her they were well and enjoying their time with Frannie’s children.
“There will be another five shillings in your wage packet for the extra duties,” said the housekeeper, and that decided it.
Maggie nodded, and the housekeeper took her upstairs to meet the ladies.
She soon decided she had made the right decision.
Lady Clara and Lady Eugenie seemed to be pleasant ladies, ready with a thank you and a smile when Maggie did something for them.
Maggie was needed immediately to dress their hair for the first activity of the day.
After they had left the room to go downstairs and join the other guests, she found her way to the room on the fourth floor where their poor maid had been carried after the accident.
The woman greeted her with a surly, “And who might you be? I am not a raree show.”
“I am Mrs. Maggie Parker, and I am helping your ladies while you are laid up, Miss Brown. I came to see if there is anything I need to know about being their maid, and also, if there is anything I can do for you.”
Miss Brown regarded her steadily and then thawed a little. “Might as well come in, then. Mrs. Parker, is it? Don’t see many married women in our position.”
“I cannot claim to be a proper lady’s maid, Miss Brown.
Not like you. That’s why I’d be grateful for any advice you can give me.
I am a sergeant’s daughter and a sergeant’s wife, and have served a few officer’s wives during my time in the army.
But something like this grand house party is beyond anything I’ve known. ”
With a frown, Miss Brown asked, “Where is your husband, Mrs. Parker?”
“I do not know,” Maggie replied, with a sigh. She launched into the often-told story. “Will disappeared at Toulouse….” ending with, “I’ll go to all of them if I must. I need to know, you see.”
Miss Brown looked more puzzled than either condemning or sympathetic. “I don’t understand,” she complained. “I assume you are a housemaid here. Where is your daughter?”
“I am a temporary servant,” Maggie explained.
While she spoke, she was dusting and tidying, for it wasn’t in her nature to sit still when there was work to be done, and Miss Brown must be uncomfortable having to look at dusty surfaces and clutter.
“Hired for the house party. Eva and her older brother Billy are staying with a local cottager, who is also looking after her grandchildren. Once the party is over, we shall be off to the next Ashton on our list.” With a twinkle in her eye, she added, “Us and our wheelbarrow,” for Miss Brown looked as if she could do with a laugh, and she might be amused by the idea of Maggie trundling a baby and an infant along the lanes of England in a wheelbarrow, on top of their worldly possessions.