Open Writing

SHE looked frail sitting there in her wheelchair, black velvet slippers peeping from under a soft blue Angora rug; parchment-like hands laid gently in her lap.

Frail, yet not vulnerable.

There was a strength, which radiated from within and stared at you through the grey-green eyes. A stubbornness which showed in the strong set of the chin, echoed, still, in the firmness of her voice.

"No, Mr James I never did marry," she replied briskly in answer to my question.

"I should be wearing a wedding band if I had."

Her left hand was bare but I noticed a large diamond encrusted ruby on the third finger of her right hand.

"My mistake Miss Isles," I said feeling chastened.

"Oh, don't be sorry young man for I am certainly not!"

The old woman dismissed my apology with a good humoured chuckle and patting her thin throat gracefully with a lace handkerchief bade me sit down on the damask covered chaise-lounge. A heavy scent of honeysuckle drifted in through the open bay window and I wanted to sneeze.

"I like fresh air," she said. "Can't stand all this damned air-conditioning."

She had a disarmingly direct way of speaking and beneath the impeccable English accent I thought I detected just a hint of north-country broadness. Despite my initial misgivings there was something about this old woman which intrigued me.

Silver hair, worn straight and elegantly trimmed, framed the small pale face.

I noticed her lids had been lightly shadowed to accentuate the green of her eyes and there was just a hint of colour on her lips. In her high-necked, classic black blouse, set off with a single strand of expensive looking pearls, Miss Isles looked every bit the wealthy dowager

This was her day and she was ready for it!

"Now come, let's have some tea shall we," said she, manoeuvring her chair over to the Call bell on the wall.

It was an order rather than a question and I didn't mind if I did. I needed time to gather my thoughts.

Today should have been my day off but I was filling in for a sick colleague. It was Miss Isles' 90th birthday and the nursing home was giving her a party.

According to the brief I'd been given she had some sort of royal connections. I don't have much time for the English aristocracy. Bloody parasites in my opinion.
"A good human interest piece Charlie," the Chief had said, "and a nice pic of the old dear cutting her birthday cake."

"Oh, God NO!"-

"Go on mate, you'll enjoy it," he guffawed. "And while you're at it have a piece for me!"

"Come off it Chief," I groaned, "I do it under duress!"

The tea came in small china cups on a silver tray. Delivered by a girl in a snazzy yellow dress which went well with her short dark hair and didn't hide her knees or the smooth curves of her trim figure.

Not bad, I thought. Not bad at all!

"Thank you Gladys," Miss Isles said, again moving her wheelchair round so the girl could put her burden down on the Queen Ann coffee table.

The old girl had read my thoughts.

"It was black dresses with starched white aprons and caps in my day, young man," she said sternly. But her eyes twinkled and the corners of her mouth stretched in the hint of a grin.

I felt we were on the same wavelength.

"And very attractive to the gentlemen so they say Ma'am." I quipped.

Her hands went up in mock horror.

"Oh, you wicked boy!" she retorted, in a way which made us both laugh.

The girl in the yellow dress laughed too.

"My guest here is a reporter Gladys, who has come to get my story," she said.

"Ooh," cooed Gladys with genuine interest, "you'll be in the papers then!"

"My story may be in the papers my dear," Miss Isles replied, as she leant to pass me my tea.

Gladys rushed to proffer the sugar bowl.

"Miss Isles is our star guest," the girl said, not in a patronising manner, as she bent over to gently fix the rug around the old lady's legs.

"She's done so many things in her lifetime you know!"

"No, my dear he doesn't know and there are some things I shan't be telling. Not to a journalist anyway!" she declared with a mischievous frown.

I decided I was going to enjoy writing this story.

Gladys left and we sipped our tea.

The rosewood bureau was crammed with photographs in heavy silver frames. My eye was taken by a large oil painting on the wall opposite.

"That's the Queen Mary," Miss Isles explained.

"We sailed in her several times."

It was a simple statement not meant to be a boast.

I wondered about the ‘we’?

She drew my attention to a faded family snapshot obviously taken in Paris. Sometime around the early thirties, I guessed, by the look of the gear they were wearing.

"Myself with Nanny and the children," she said.

I was curious about that too.

"Could I have your first name Miss Isles," I said, turning my tape recorder on and opening my notebook.

"Well, I was christened Sarah after my grandmother," she replied.

"Nice name," I remarked.

"Yes," she agreed thoughtfully, "although one's first name was rarely used in service."

I wasn't sure what she was on about.

"Just for the record, Miss Isles," I assured her.

"Where shall we start," she asked. I suggested we begin at the beginning.

She told me she was born in Cornwall, in a little grey-stone village on the edge of the moors. It sounded like a picture postcard. Rose covered cottages and cobbled streets. Grocery store, draper's shop, an ancient public house known, with good reason no doubt, as the 'Smugglers Retreat' and a tall-spired medieval church standing sentinel over the scene.

She talked of her childhood with nostalgia. The bleakness of the Cornish winter, snowmen, carol singers, mistletoe and chestnuts roasting round a hearth. Of the joyous springtime, the choosing of the May Queen and dancing on the village green. The old lady closed her eyes and her voice grew reflective. She was a young girl again walking down those country lanes, smelling the bluebells, making daisy chains.

My mobile rang. It was the office wanting to know how much longer would I be?

Miss Isles was startled by the sound and seemed surprised to see me still there.

"Ah, yes, where was I," she pondered for a moment and I grabbed my chance.

"Time is getting on," I said gently, "and there's a party waiting."
She smiled apologetically.

"I was rambling on again wasn't I?"

I nodded.

"Happy days, Mr James," she sighed.

"Sounds idyllic to me Miss Isles."

"Ah, that it was, Mr James," she said, "that it was!"

I asked about her family. She told me her grandfather had been a well-to-do Yorkshire clergyman and a highly respected member of the community.

"I never did get to meet him," she said, "or my grandmother who, I believe, was kept very much under the thumb as most women were in those days."

I sensed a deep resentment in her voice.

"My poor Mother reaped a bitter harvest when she committed the unpardonable sin of eloping with my father at the tender age of eighteen years. A young lady of genteel upbringing and a poor but handsome fisherman!"

"So, her old man didn't like it?"

"Do you believe in love at first sight, Mr James?" she asked.

"Some do," I hedged.

"But what about you, Mr James?" she insisted.

"It happens," I said.

"Well, my parents met at the Whitby Fair and from all accounts fell hopelessly in love! The family was holidaying in the village. Mother went to the Fair with her sisters and they somehow became separated. Father saw her distress and offered to escort her back to her abode."

I glanced down at my watch and she noticed. Not much escaped this little lady.

"It’s a long story, Mr James", she said. "Are you sure you want me to go on?"

"Go on please Miss Isles!" I said. "We can’t stop now, can we?"

Reassured, she took another sip of tea and continued.

"Well, they made arrangements to meet again next time he came back into port. They did, and two months later she sailed off with him to Cornwall!"

"Sounds real romantic," said I.

"Romantic indeed but somewhat foolhardy," she declared.

Apparently the old man blew his stack. But by the time he caught up with the errant pair it was already too late. So he disowned her and forbade any of the family ever to contact her or she them.

"A bit harsh, wasn’t it?" I remarked.

"It was a cruel thing to do!" she replied.

"Were they happy?"

"Happy enough, I suppose; but life was jolly hard for them as it was for most folks back then!"

She talked fondly of her father and of his tragic death by drowning.
"It was such a beastly night," she said, clutching at her shawl as if chilled by the memory.

"We were all huddled up in bed when, above the screeching of the storm, we heard a ship's bell ringing in distress."

Miss Isles drew in a long, deep breath.

"I stood there, at the bedroom door, watching him put on his oils and his big sou’wester and I cried for him not to go."

Her words came slowly and painfully.

"I must have had some sort of premonition," she said. "We Cornish are fey folks you know!"

She asked if I'd been to Cornwall. I said I had. And yes, I had heard of the bravery of the Cornish lifeboat crews.

"All those years ago," she said, voice filled with emotion, "yet the memory of that terrible night has never left me!"

"A sad tale, Miss Isles," I sympathised.

"Sad indeed, Mr James", she replied, "For my mother was left destitute with six hungry mouths to feed. We were poor, terribly poor and I, being the eldest, was forced to leave school at the age of twelve and go to work as a scullery maid."

She must have seen the look on my face.

"That surprises you, Mr James?" she said her eyes searching mine.

I nodded.

"Ah," she said, gently reprimanding, "one should never judge a book by its cover!"

"Touche!" I said, "Touche!"

"The wages were meagre," she went on, "but cook gave me food to take home to the family and the Mistress was very kind."

She leant over to pour some soda water from a siphon into a crystal glass on the table beside her. "Excuse me," she said then continued.
"Just before my fifteenth birthday, a grand Lady arrived at the big house in a shiny black carriage, with a liveried footman

"She looked so beautiful," she sighed. "Just like a fairy princess!"
The old woman's face lit up as she spoke.

"A grand lady eh!" I sniffed. But I don't think she heard.

"It was a bitter cold morning," she said, with an imaginary shiver.
"The frost hung white on the chestnut trees along the drive..."

She gazed past me to the garden beyond, remembering.

"Straight after lunch the Mistress called me into the parlour and there she was, standing by the window. She smiled at me and bade me come closer."

The old woman sighed again.

"I can hear her voice now," she murmured.

"Hello Isles, she said. How are you child? I was so nervous I could hardly answer."

Her voice became almost inaudible and I sensed the old dear was drifting off again so I gave a polite cough.

She apologised.

"Oh dear, please do forgive me Mr James," she said and went on with her story.

"My Lady Stanhope asked if I would like to go to work for her in Australia!"

"Good Lord! Just like that?"

. "Just like that Mr James!" she replied.

"And you said yes?"

"Oh no, I was too shy to say anything," she laughed, "so I just curtsied!"

Watching her sitting there, surrounded by the trappings of wealth, I was touched by her simple honesty and with the naivety of the child she once was.

I thought of my own fifteen-year-old daughter. My God how times had changed!

The old lady pushed herself over to the photo gallery selecting a framed cameo of a handsome looking couple.

"My Lady Stanhope," she said with reverence "and the Master, Lord Stanhope."

They were newly wed, she explained, and the ‘Master’ was taking his bride back to live in the colony where he had extensive holdings.

"My Lady wished to choose her own servants and she said that the Mistress had spoken well of me. The two were cousins, d’you see," Miss Isles said by way of explanation.

It was fate which had brought her to Australia, she declared.
Another young girl had been previously selected but she had fallen gravely ill and a quick substitute had to be found.

"Her misfortune was my luck Mr James!"

Carefully, she placed the photo back on the bureau and proceeded with her story.

"That's settled then Isles, my Lady said. I shall speak to your mother and make the necessary arrangements."

She slowly shook her head. "It all seemed like a dream," she said. "I kept wondering when I should wake up!"

At this point I realised that this was shaping up to be much more than just another happy birthday saga. Miss Isles was, in fact, one of a dying breed!

"How did you feel about leaving home Miss Isles?" I asked.

"I was excited, naturally, and a wee bit sad," she said.
She sipped the soda water.

"Of course I had no idea how far Australia was," she exclaimed, "for I'd hardly been outside our own village."

She thought for a moment.

"Except once, when we went to Penzance and that seemed a jolly long way!"

I asked how her mother had felt about her leaving England.

"She was quite proud that I was to work for a titled Lady," Miss Isles said.
-
"Arrangements were made for my mother to receive regular payments of two pounds per month from my salary of twelve shillings and sixpence per week, plus keep."

To me the idea of being a bonded servant, bowing and scraping to nobility for a mere pittance seemed totally anathema.

She was reading my thoughts again.

"It may not appeal to your generation young man but let me tell you that in my day such a position was very highly regarded."

"I'm sure it was," I said meekly.

"Anyway," she insisted, "the villagers were greatly impressed."

She might well have added ‘SO THERE!’

"The vicar's wife gave me a new Bible and an old tin trunk and the staff from the big house had a collection and presented me with two gold sovereigns, which seemed to me like a fortune at the time!"
Between us we tried to calculate the relative value in today's currency.

"Mind you," she continued with a wry smile, "I had precious little to put in the trunk, except for a few cast-off clothes and two homemade red flannel nighties that were a gift from my maiden aunt."

"Very sexy I’m sure," I quipped, "and just the thing for those chilly Melbourne nights."

We shared the joke and she continued.

"Three days later I was hastily put on a stagecoach to London and we set sail from Tilbury on my fifteenth birthday, just seventy five years ago today!"

"You were a very brave and courageous young girl," I remarked, "going off on your own like that all the way to Australia."

She dismissed the compliment with a chuckle.

"No, not brave at all, Mr James," she said.

"I was homesick and seasick before we left the English Channel!" She was accommodated in the steerage section, she explained, sharing a cabin in the bowels of the ship with five other young women. Her employers, of course, travelled first class. A situation that, to Miss Isles, seemed quite right and proper.

"The voyage took three months and six days and, oh my word what a journey it was!"

She talked of the journey and of her arrival at the Toorak mansion. A stately home amongst other stately homes, with rolling lawns looking down across to the banks of the Yarra River.

"When we drove through the gold-crested gates up the wide carriageway to the front entrance I was awe-struck!"

The household, she said, consisted of two cooks, six maids, three gardeners, four grooms, a housekeeper and a Butler.

House rules were strict and gentlemen friends forbidden.

"We had two half days off each week and one full day every month. And mind," she said wagging her finger, "we had to be in by ten thirty at night."

"Sounds tough to me," I remarked.

"Times were tough, Mr James," she said.

I was curious to know what she did on her days off.

"Sometimes we took the tram into Melbourne and went to the picture theatre."

"Can you remember what you saw Miss Isles?"

"Of course I can remember," she protested and proceeded to name stars of the silent movies such as Rudolph Valentino, Charles Chaplin, and Mary Pickford...

"Do those names mean anything to you Mr James?"

"I've heard of them," I said.

Miss Isles seemed pleased.

She talked of her life in service and of her rise from kitchen maid to trusted companion. Initially confined to ‘below stairs’ she was placed under the watchful eye of cook, a kindly but strict woman, and allotted the most menial of tasks.

Promoted to parlour maid at the age of eighteen; "for which I received an extra five shillings and sixpence per week and two new uniforms," Isles then worked her way up the servant ladder to become Personal Maid to the Mistress of the House.

"I served my Lady for more than 50 years and travelled with her around the world but after the Master died My Lady became a recluse," she said sadly.

"In those last years I was her constant companion and trusted friend."

Miss Isles looked slowly round the room.

"When she died she left me quite well off, as you can see Mr James." We could hear the sound of dishes rattling in the corridor outside and the girl peeped in to remind us that there was a party waiting to happen.

"We shan't be long now Gladys," the old lady called, turning to me for confirmation.

I sensed she was tiring.

"Just a few more minutes," I said nodding to the girl.

Miss Isles pointed again to the picture of the liner, Queen Mary. "We were sailing to New York on her in 1939 when war was declared and there was complete pandemonium!"

"But no," she said sizing me up, "you're far too young to remember that!"

"I served in the Vietnam War," I proffered hoping that might compensate but she ignored the remark.

"The ship went straight back to London where she was converted to a troop carrier and then sent to Australia," she said.

I remembered reading something about it.

"My Lady and I travelled home on her. His Lordship stayed behind in London and joined the Royal Navy."

"You mean you two ladies travelled alone on a troop ship?"

"Oh, we were quite safe Mr James for there were plenty more women and children going home."

"Were the children travelling with you, Miss Isles?"

"Oh dear me no!" she said, "the girls were at boarding school in Melbourne."

The old woman bent forward and picked up the photo of herself with the children in Paris. She gently rubbed her fingers over the covering glass.

"John, the eldest, joined the Australian Airforce and was killed in action in 1944," she said sorrowfully.

I was touched by her devotion to the family she served. Such loyalty, I thought cynically, would be beyond the ken of most of the present day generation.

"There's really not much more to tell," she was saying.

"During the war my Lady opened up the house as a convalescent home for wounded American servicemen and worked tirelessly for the war effort. She received a commendation for her services and, when it was all over, we went off to America where we visited at the White House as guests of President Eisenhower.

"I'm impressed, Miss Isles," I replied and I was.

"But my Lady was always a welcome guest wherever she went," the old woman stressed with obvious pride. "A true lady she was!" Her keen eyes challenged mine. "I believe you would have liked her, Mr James."

"I think perhaps I would," I conceded.

"My Lady Stanhope was of Scottish descent," the old woman said.

"Her family owned large estates not far from Balmoral."

She opened the bureau drawer and produced some faded snapshots.

"Lord Stanhope often went for the shooting season but my Lady loved to be there with all the family at Christmastime."

"Some shack!" I observed. "Looks great all covered in snow."

"Oh, it was, Mr James!" she declared, gleefully clapping her hands.
"Log fires and mistletoe and so many wonderful parties!"

"Not bad going for a country wench from Cornwall eh?"

She smiled a contented smile and laid her hand gently on mine.
"I've had a very fortunate life young fellow," she said.

There was another knock on the door and the girl came in.

Miss Isles tidied her hair with her hands.

"We’ve finished now Gladys," she said gathering up her handkerchief and pillbox from the table and placing them in her small satin clutch bag. "I’ve enjoyed our little chat," Mr James she said.

But Gladys was not quite finished.

"Did she tell you how she once danced with the Prince of Wales?" she questioned as we were leaving the room.

"Come girl, everyone danced with the Prince of Wales!" Miss Isles scolded.

"Never any romantic attachments then?" I ventured as I helped push her wheelchair down the corridor.

"Off the record, Mr James?" she asked, playfully putting a finger to her closed lips.

"Off the record of course," I assured her.

"Well," she whispered, fingering the ruby ring on her right hand, "one did get to meet some very handsome gentlemen…"

The old lady's voice trailed off.

"Someone special?" I urged.

She looked up at me; eyes filled with unshed tears.

"Love, Mr James," she declared, "can be a very painful business!"

I gently squeezed her frail hand in mine.

"Careful young sir," she said with mock severity, "people might talk!"

We had reached the end of the corridor and there was a chorus of "Happy Birthday" as we opened the door.

"Wouldn't happen to be the Prince of Wales?" I teased.

"My dear Mr James," she replied, with one of those secret smiles that women do so well, "you are a very charming and persuasive young man, as was his Highness!"

"Now," she ordered, firmly taking my arm, "please do come and join the party."