Chapter Seventeen #3
Subdued, Kitty followed her to the recreation room, where the girls sat in the evenings, furnished with sofas, armchairs and some small tables with upright chairs where they could write or work.
It was unadorned and a little shabby, but there were rugs on the floor and a fire in the big fireplace, ready to be lit.
As she looked around and found nothing to say, Miss Eddowes seemed driven again to defence.
‘Consider what they came from,’ she said.
‘They do not expect luxury – nor should they be encouraged to hope for it.’
The dining-room had long trestle tables with wooden forms on either side, linoleum on the floor, which two girls were engaged in silently scrubbing.
They did not look up. From behind doors at the end a faint savoury smell issued – it might be soup or stew – the evening meal in preparation, presumably.
‘Upstairs are two dormitories, which I won’t show you, and the sanatorium. That is where the girls go to give birth.’
‘And where are the babies?’ Kitty asked. ‘I haven’t heard any crying since we arrived.’
‘We keep them here for as little time as possible,’ said Miss Eddowes.
‘They’re taken away from the mother at once.
The nursery is on the top floor and we have two paid nursemaids to care for them.
The girls are not allowed to go up there.
It is in their interests to have as little to do with them as possible.
They forget more quickly if they have nothing to remember. ’
Kitty wondered if that was true. At least, she wondered if you would mind more. ‘It all seems to be very well run,’ she said, since Miss Eddowes seemed to expect a response. ‘Very efficient.’
Miss Eddowes nodded. ‘As well as the nursery maids,’ she went on, ‘we have a cook and kitchen maid, two housemaids, the matron and my secretary on the paid staff. Also a part-time gardener and handyman. Otherwise we rely on the girls themselves and occasional voluntary help. We try to keep our costs down as much as possible. But the girls’ stay here is often necessarily long, and medical attention is expensive.
We would like to take in more girls – I dislike very much to have to turn anyone away – but that depends on acquiring more funds.
And attracting patrons is difficult when everything has to be kept secret.
’ She glanced sideways at Kitty. ‘If only some ladies like you would be willing to speak out openly and remove the stigma…’
Kitty didn’t answer, not knowing what to say. She couldn’t imagine a world in which having a baby out of wedlock did not entail stigma, or where the subject could be raised openly in the drawing-room.
A door from a corridor on the other side of the hall opened into a small waiting-room, a chill and bare space containing nothing but half a dozen hard chairs around the walls.
There were two doors in the wall opposite.
Miss Eddowes indicated the one on the left and said, ‘That is the matron’s room.
And this,’ she said, opening the one on the right, ‘is my office.’
It was a large room that was part sitting-room and part office.
A sofa and armchairs were ranged around a good, brisk burning fire.
On a small table beside one chair lay a book with a book-mark sticking out of it; and the mantelpiece over the fire had some ornaments on it and a number of letters and cards.
Above it hung a large, dark oil-painting of a man in a frock-coat.
Kitty thought it seemed vaguely familiar, though at this distance, and in the gloom away from the window, she couldn’t make out any details.
And, of course, all Victorian portraits of men looked much the same.
She assumed it must be Miss Eddowes’s father, who had left her the money to do her good works.
There was nothing of luxury here, but it was cosy after the bareness of the rooms outside.
On the other side of the room there were two desks, some cupboards, and a whole wall of shelves on which stood books and sundry boxes and a large number of identical tall red-leather-covered ledgers.
At one of the desks a middle-aged woman, plainly dressed and sharp-faced, was engaged in some clerical activity.
She looked up, then stood as she saw Miss Eddowes had a visitor.
‘Allow me to introduce my assistant, Mrs Painswick,’ said Miss Eddowes. ‘Lady Stainton has very kindly come to visit us to see how we work.’
Some kind of enquiring look seemed to pass between Mrs Painswick and Miss Eddowes, and there was a noticeable hesitation before Mrs Painswick said, ‘How do you do, Lady Stainton?’
Kitty had got chilled walking about the unheated corridors, and moved over to the fireplace to warm herself. ‘I believe yours is valuable work,’ she said, ‘and I would like to help if it can be managed, so I thought I ought to see for myself. It’s a much larger place than I imagined.’
As she was speaking, her eye wandered to the portrait – not to the painting itself, but to the bottom of the frame which, short as she was, was the only part she could see without craning her neck.
A brass plaque was screwed in to the middle of it, and she read it idly as she spoke.
Miss Eddowes made some reply to her statement but she didn’t hear a word of it.
Her attention was riveted to the words engraved on that brass plate.
WILLIAM GEORGE LOUIS DEVEREUX TALLANT, 5TH EARL OF STAINTON
She craned her neck. Now she knew why it looked familiar.
It was the painting that hung in the Queen’s Bedroom.
She turned and looked her astonishment at Miss Eddowes.
‘How did you get this? When…What…’ She couldn’t remember when she had last seen it – she didn’t often go into the Queen’s Bedroom.
Miss Eddowes had come up to the Castle for that meeting…
But she couldn’t possibly have walked out with it.
Had Giles given it to her? But why on earth would he do that?
She gathered her words together with an effort.
‘What are you doing with my husband’s father’s portrait? ’
‘It is not the original,’ Miss Eddowes said calmly, though Kitty saw there was a spot of colour in her cheeks, and she was not as unmoved as she sounded. ‘It is a copy. There were two, I believe – “from the studio of”, as they say. I don’t know who had the other.’
‘But why?’ Kitty asked forcefully.
‘He was—’ Mrs Painswick began to answer, but was silenced by a quick small movement of Miss Eddowes’s hand. They exchanged a long look. Then Mrs Painswick said, ‘Perhaps she ought to know.’
‘We have never talked about it,’ Miss Eddowes said, with emphasis.
Mrs Painswick looked resentful. ‘Keeping his secret, for his sake?’
‘It was not him we were protecting.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Kitty said. She drew herself up. She was a small person, but she had been countess for long enough now to be bigger inside, and indignation made her bigger still. ‘I demand that you tell me. What had he to do with you?’
Her companions were still locked in a silent stare. Then Miss Eddowes gave the slightest sigh, her shoulders went down, and Mrs Painswick, as if licensed by this, said, ‘He was one of our most generous patrons.’
The tone in which she said it was not one of admiration or gratitude.
‘What do you mean? Why do you say it like that? The earl was a patron of your home for unfortunate girls? I don’t believe it!’ But even as she said it, a horrid idea came to her.
Miss Eddowes was watching her expression, and now said, ‘I have kept the secret for twenty years, but I forgot about the painting. I blame myself for not removing it. I don’t know why he gave it to me in the first place.
Perhaps it was a joke. He did always, regrettably, find something amusing in the idea of what we did.
God knows why. And I have struggled with my conscience over the years, believe me, Lady Stainton.
Was I, by dealing with the consequences of his actions on his behalf, effectively condoning them – even facilitating them? ’
‘You can’t think like that,’ Mrs Painswick, said in a dull voice. ‘We’ve been over this so many times. He would have done what he did whether this place existed or not. It was a case of finding the least bad outcome.’
‘Let me understand,’ Kitty said, struggling with a sick feeling of horror. ‘You took in a girl that the earl had made pregnant? Or was it…more than one?’
It was Mrs Painswick who answered. Miss Eddowes seemed sunk in thought.
‘Many more than one.’ She gestured towards the red-leather-bound ledgers on the shelf beside her.
‘We keep a record of every girl who passes through here, where she is sent and where the baby is placed. I could show you the entries that were the result of our noble patron’s activities—’
‘Don’t,’ Miss Eddowes interrupted sharply, though whether she meant don’t show the ledgers, or simply don’t speak of it, Kitty wasn’t sure.
‘But why?’ Kitty asked. ‘Why would you…cover up for him?’
For once in her life Miss Eddowes displayed a feeling, and it was bitterness.
‘Because there were other girls. And he was generous. The donation he made when we took in a girl he had…got into trouble, covered the costs of several others. It is expensive to run this place. The servants’ wages – we have to hire people who will keep the secret, and pay them for their silence.
The maintenance of the house, the girls’ keep, the doctors’ fees, the cost of maintaining the agency in London that finds the girls work and the one that deals with placing the baby.
I cannot fund it all myself. And as you already understand, getting donations from respectable ladies like yourself is difficult.
The betrayers of these girls are rarely willing to pay anything – they are all too often unwilling even to admit their involvement.
He was unusual in that regard. You have to give him credit for that. ’